When I first started carving spoons, I was excited about the idea of a makers mark. And it also seemed like a fun idea to number things as I went along. But I didn’t want numerals to distract or take up too much space, so I came up with a scheme that accomplishes both goals in a relatively small space.
The “DZ” part is pretty straightforward: that’d be my initials, and I had sketched out this kind of stylized logo before. The numbering was a little trickier. I needed something clear but compact, and it struck me that counting in binary is just that. Instead of using zeros and ones, though, I could use dots and spaces.
Starting at the top (you could think of it as the 1 o’clock position) and moving around clockwise are the binary place values from 1 to 2048 (so I’ll have to figure out a new scheme once I reach 4096 pieces).
Add up all the place values with dots and you get the number of the spoon.
At the time, I had a small CNC milling machine out in the garage. With CAD software on my computer, a design idea, and a machine that could cut metal, I had a plan.
My original idea was to machine the mirror of the “DZ” logo with a bunch of holes drilled around it:
And then I would load in little brass rods at each of the spots I wanted dots. It… didn’t work very well at all. The rods were super finicky, and it was very hard to get them all the exact same length. Back to the drawing board!
The next revision is what I’m still using today:
I threaded the back side to mate up with the cheap but perfectly functional Harbor Freight Hobby Woodburner. It takes a good 10 minutes to properly warm up, but then it works like a champ! I use an equally cheap but equally functional (in this use case, anyway) soldering iron to mark the dots between the lines. Ta da!
As of December, 2025, I’m up to number 99.