Making Bookplates with Electrolytic Etching
Chemicals and Electricity, What Fun! One Christmas, I made custom bookplates for myself and a few friends by etching zinc plates. They came out great, and the process, while taking much longer than I would have liked, is a great technique for customizing copper, brass, or zinc metalwork. Here’s the artwork I did for the whole set:
You Will Need:
- 12ga. zinc plates, available from any well-stocked art supply store. You can also use copper or brass. I’ve read that steel will also etch with this setup, but also that it won’t, so if you have a definitive answer on that let me know.
- Semi-gloss inkjet photo paper, the cheaper the better so that the paper will be thin. I used HP Everyday Semi-Gloss Photo Paper.
- A clothes iron.
- A plastic water pitcher
- A steel oven rack or barbecue grill
- A few 100W bulbs and sockets
- Pure copper sulfate, which is sold under the trade name RootKill or as Bordeaux mixture. You can find it in the gardening section at Home Despot.
The process of getting all of these from Illustrator into Zinc is somewhat involved, and here I should probably say we will be working with toxic chemicals and electricity, together, and this process releases hydrogen gas, which is highly flammable. It’s not for the faint of heart. But it doesn’t require any special equipment, and if you work safely you should be okay.
September 13th, 2010 at 3:09 pm
this is one of the coolest thing i ever seen i tryed it with brass plate it didnt work out as well as yours. but it was only a test . but thanks very much for the post
September 13th, 2010 at 5:45 pm
Thanks, Joe!
My understanding is that brass typically uses an acid etch, so you might try adding some vinegar (acetic acid) to the mix, and see if that improves the etch? The zinc plates are available at any good arts supply store, so there’s an option if you’d rather go to that way.
Again, just my understanding here, but I think brass emits considerably more hydrogen gas when you etch, so make sure you work in a well-ventilated space!
Post back if you have any success.
September 30th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
Actually I think the resistance of the hot light bulb tungsten electrode is higher than when it is cold. And as the filament boils off (slowly, but that’s how the insides of vacuum tubes and car light bulbs get shiny gray) the resistance will go up. Turns out you can predict bulb failure that way. That was almost-a-patent years ago. But I digress. Some Day I will measure some AC bulb resistances on and off to really prove this to myself. Thanks for the fun post… makes me want to go play with some chemicals.
October 1st, 2010 at 9:29 pm
Hey Bruce,
The resistance of a standard metal does increase with temperature, due to increased number of atomic collisions at higher temperatures:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_resistance#Temperature_dependence
As a practical matter, if you put an Ohmmeter on a cold bulb, you’ll measure a much lower resistance than the derived value that you would get from measuring current and voltage under load. Something to keep in mind if you’re using incandescent lamps as resistors. Glad you enjoyed the post, thanks for commenting!
April 4th, 2011 at 4:22 pm
Wow … that is really nice deep bite. Just wanted to say there is an easier way to etch zinc, mild steel and aluminum which does NOT need electricity because it is electro-chemical in nature and apparently non-toxic … hmmmm … maybe no gass-off!!!??? Check it out: http://www.nontoxicprint.com/etchzincsteelaluminum.htm