Propane Beehive Branding Iron with 14 Characters

01 · WHY FIRE

Paint lasts a season, fire lasts for good

Spanish rules require every hive to carry the holding's REGA code, and inspections have tightened. Paint, marker pens and plates last a season; fire leaves a mark that neither sun nor rain erases.

With fourteen positions you can fit what a short REGA cannot: internal prefixes, harvest batches or a mark that tells migratory equipment from fixed. It brands on wood, plastic and polystyrene.

02 · THE FOURTEEN SLOTS

Fill them all, even with a short code

This is the point that ruins most brandings: although the head would run with fewer pieces, on the long model all fourteen slots must be occupied. Leave gaps and the heat concentrates at the ends while the centre comes out cold and uneven; and the metal left without support can bend or deform with the heat.

If your code is shorter, make it up with blank characters — the “Space” option of the bronze character — or with dashes. Thermally they count as much as real characters: they are not decoration, they are part of the heat path and what keeps the head from deforming.

03 · PROPANE, NOT BUTANE

And the reason is physics, not sales

The tool draws a lot of gas, and that flow chills the bottle fast. Butane stops evaporating at 0 °C: as soon as the bottle frosts over, pressure falls below the 3 bar needed and the burn turns poor and patchy.

Propane keeps evaporating far below zero, so it holds a whole morning of branding without the flame fading and without warming the bottle every few minutes.

04 · THE REGULATOR

3 bar, and the household one will not do

You need a high-pressure 3 bar regulator, with a 16 bar inlet and a flow of around 18 kg/h. Any domestic or low-pressure regulator leaves the head without the power to heat fourteen positions at once.

With the right gas and regulator, the head reaches working temperature in five or six minutes.

05 · PRECAUTIONS

A blowtorch is not a rubber stamp

Light it outdoors only. When you open the gas the flame can reach out some 40 cm in the first moment, so keep the front clear.

After switching off it stays hot for about fifteen minutes: always rest it on a non-flammable surface, which is what the stainless base is for. And a rule that also improves the mark: pressure on the wood must be minimal. If you have to press, it is not up to temperature yet.

06 · BEFORE YOU BUY

It is the iron; the set is completed separately: