Making Bookplates with Electrolytic Etching
Part III: The Etching EquipmentPart IV: The Etching Process and Final Remarks
The Etching Process: add a small amount of copper sulfate into the water, stir, then wait a few minutes. Keep this up until no more crystals will dissolve in the water. As the plate etches, it’ll get covered with dark crud. Pull the plate out of the bath every fifteen minutes and clean it off with a soft brush.
You don’t have to go all that deep to get a good print, 1/32″ is plenty. When you’re done, rinse off the plate and take off the toner with steel wool. Your finished plate will look like this:
If you’re using a stamp pad, you may want to put a coat of clear enamel on the plate, which will hold the ink better. If you’re using the thicker block printing ink, this is not a worry.
Also, if you put a wood backing onto the back of the plate, it will prevent the plate from flexing, so you won’t get a print in large open areas. I made mine out of a 4″x3/4″ plank of oak, which I doubled up and cut the handhold on the side with a router. It came out nicely:
Disposal: the amount of dissolved copper solution produced isn’t really enough to be a serious environmental worry, but cleanup is easy. Toss a piece of steel wool in the tank overnight and the copper in the solution will immersion plate onto the steel. If you carefully lift the steel wool out of the solution, you should be able to remove most of the copper from the solution. You can then throw the steel wool and plated copper away (or recycle it, I suppose), it’s not a hazard in solid form.
Further Reading:
- Cedric Green’s excellent site on various etching techniques and their relative advantages, with an emphasis on the galvanic technique used here:
- Jake Von Slatt’s walkthrough of electrolytic etching of brass, using the same technique used here:
Good luck, let me know how you make out!
Go to Section:
- Part I: Prologue
- Part II: Preparing the Plate
- Part III: The Etching Equipment
- Part IV: The Etching Process and Final Remarks
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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