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Ingredients for your own home copper etching tank
- Muriatic Acid (Hydrochloric or “Pool” acid)
- Hydrogen Peroxide (some people use the hair-bleach strength, I just use the drugstore strength)
- A glass container large enough for your work with a cover (I use an old casserole dish with its own glass lid)
- Tongs/gloves/something to pick stuff up with
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Mix 2 parts hydrogen peroxide to one part acid (ALWAYS add acid second!) in your glass container. Now you’re ready to add your copper piece and bask in the magic of etching!
- Illustrated instructions here
In my previous life as a graduate student, I took a lot of printmaking courses. I learned how to create wood and linoleum cuts, silkscreen (also known as seriography), and how to create etchings.
Etchings were special to me because they were kind of magic. You’d take a plain piece of metal, cover it in goo, scratch into said goo, then put it in actual, honest to god acid. You know, like the supervillians use. Out of this goo and acid process, you’d get a plate that had your artwork permanently incribed in it. From there you could transfer this art, with the help of some ink and a fancy-dancy printing press, to paper and make copies of it (or prints, for the purist). The prints didn’t excite me half as much as the etching process though, because of the whole magic aspect of it all.
When I started making jewelry again, I kept thinking about etching. Since I work a lot with copper, it just seemed natural to want to etch designs into some of my work. The only problem was that I was (and still am) working out of a basement studio. I didn’t think I had access to things like Dutch Mordant and all the other things that we used to use in the printmaking studio. Little did I know that I didn’t really need all of that.
Taking a look at sites like Instructables, I soon learned that there is more than one way to skin a cat (or etch a clasp). Instead of using a lot of fancy mixes or powders, and in place of using sort of harmful things like circuit-board etchant, I discovered that you can etch copper with items bought at home depot and the drugstore. Excellent. By the way, etching aluminum requires only the hydrochloric (muriatic) acid.
Once you have the solution made, you can use permanent marker to cover your copper, laser-printer or photocopier toner (print out your design on acetate, then transfer to the copper using an iron), or you can get some asphaltum or ground from an art supply store like Dick Blick or Utrecht (also look at Ball Grounds) to protect parts of the plate from the acid while uncovered parts of the plate etch. You can remove these with acetate (nail polish remover),or you can heat the metal slightly and polish off the excess with a cloth.
This method doesn’t have to be applied to jewelry components only, either. This could also be an interesting way to do tags and business cards, by embossing heavy paper with whatever design/logo/text you’ve created. Too many cool possible uses to list, but I think you get the picture.