{"id":125,"date":"2012-02-09T22:17:22","date_gmt":"2012-02-09T22:17:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/?p=125"},"modified":"2022-03-22T01:10:51","modified_gmt":"2022-03-22T01:10:51","slug":"etching-brass","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/","title":{"rendered":"Etching Brass"},"content":{"rendered":"

I ran across the steampunk workshop’s brass etching guide<\/a> a while ago, and I’ve been meaning to try it out since then. Last week I finally got around to it, and the results look pretty nice.<\/p>\n

The process is pretty simple.<\/p>\n

\"Toner<\/a><\/p>\n

Step one is to print a stencil onto glossy paper (I used old magazine pages) using a laser printer. The laser printer is necessary because the toner can be melted using an iron.<\/p>\n

I cleaned the brass I was planning to use by polishing it with steel wool, then rubbing it down with alcohol to remove any oils from my fingers. Next I put the stencil face down on my brass and ironed it. I held the iron down on each stencil for two or three minutes and pushed pretty hard. This melted the toner and stuck it to the brass.<\/p>\n

After ironing, the paper was stuck to the toner, which was stuck to the brass. I soaked the whole thing in water overnight, then gently brushed away all the paper. Some of my stencils ended up with a couple of holes, so I painted over those with some acrylic paint.<\/p>\n

\"Brass<\/a><\/p>\n

The next step was the actual etching. This involves submerging the brass in a copper sulfate solution and running a current through it. The copper sulfate solution is a very pretty blue.<\/p>\n

\"Copper<\/a><\/p>\n

The working piece (which you want to remove metal from) gets connected to the positive terminal of an old battery charger I had. I used an old piece of brass about the same size as my working piece as the negative terminal. When I hooked up the battery charger, molecules would leave the surface of the positively charged plate and be deposited on the negatively charged plate.<\/p>\n

\"Etching<\/a><\/p>\n

The etching took about half an hour to an hour, but part of that was because my current was actually too high. Normally a higher current corresponds to faster etching, but in my case the high current caused the battery charger to overheat and shut down. I had to keep letting the battery charger cool before I could restart the etching. I could reduce the current by putting a resistor in series with the brass plates, but it would have to be a very small, very high power resistor.<\/p>\n

The battery charger is rated for 6A, but I was running probably 12 to 20 through it. Let’s just assume 16A. That means my brass etching setup probably has a resistance of about 12\/16 = .75 Ohms (see Ohm’s law<\/a>). To drop the current to only 6A, we’d need a resistor that was 12\/6-.75=1.25 Ohms. It would have to be able to withstand 1.25*6^2 = 45W. That’s is a beefy resistor.<\/p>\n

An alternative to a series resistor is to make the resistance of my etching bath higher. I could do this by using a smaller negative terminal. The negative terminal should be about the same size as the working piece so that it etches evenly, but I think I could get away with using a brass mesh rather than with using a brass plate.<\/p>\n

In any case, my etches came out fairly nicely. The holes I patched up using acrylic paint didn’t turn out very well. I think the acrylic paint pulled off while I was etching. Everything covered by toner turned out nicely though. After I had finished the etching, I grabbed some steel wool and polished the whole thing to a nice shine.<\/p>\n

\"Etched<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I ran across the steampunk workshop’s brass etching guide a while ago, and I’ve been meaning to try it out since then. Last week I finally got around to it, and the results look pretty nice. The process is pretty simple. Step one is to print a stencil onto glossy paper (I used old magazine … Continue reading “Etching Brass”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[36,37,38,39],"class_list":["post-125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-art","tag-brass-etching","tag-electricity","tag-steampunk"],"yoast_head":"\nEtching Brass - Theory and Practice<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Etching Brass - Theory and Practice\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I ran across the steampunk workshop’s brass etching guide a while ago, and I’ve been meaning to try it out since then. Last week I finally got around to it, and the results look pretty nice. The process is pretty simple. Step one is to print a stencil onto glossy paper (I used old magazine … Continue reading "Etching Brass"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Theory and Practice\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-02-09T22:17:22+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2022-03-22T01:10:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/2012-01-28-17.09.37-225x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"morgan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"morgan\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"morgan\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/15fce334735dd60ce7bb5712c44a62dd\"},\"headline\":\"Etching Brass\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-02-09T22:17:22+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-03-22T01:10:51+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/\"},\"wordCount\":577,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/15fce334735dd60ce7bb5712c44a62dd\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/2012-01-28-17.09.37-225x300.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"art\",\"brass etching\",\"electricity\",\"steampunk\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/\",\"name\":\"Etching Brass - Theory and Practice\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"http:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/2012-01-28-17.09.37-225x300.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2012-02-09T22:17:22+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2022-03-22T01:10:51+00:00\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/2012-01-28-17.09.37.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/2012-01-28-17.09.37.jpg\",\"width\":\"1920\",\"height\":\"2560\",\"caption\":\"Toner stencils\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Etching Brass\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/\",\"name\":\"Theory and Practice\",\"description\":\"Exploring life through science and art.\",\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/15fce334735dd60ce7bb5712c44a62dd\"},\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":[\"Person\",\"Organization\"],\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/15fce334735dd60ce7bb5712c44a62dd\",\"name\":\"morgan\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0da7fa0a0a07a8497d51de4300111d978b649e254fc1afa26dc67f3b83d24c38?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0da7fa0a0a07a8497d51de4300111d978b649e254fc1afa26dc67f3b83d24c38?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"morgan\"},\"logo\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\"},\"url\":\"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/author\/morgan\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Etching Brass - Theory and Practice","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Etching Brass - Theory and Practice","og_description":"I ran across the steampunk workshop’s brass etching guide a while ago, and I’ve been meaning to try it out since then. Last week I finally got around to it, and the results look pretty nice. The process is pretty simple. Step one is to print a stencil onto glossy paper (I used old magazine … Continue reading \"Etching Brass\"","og_url":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/","og_site_name":"Theory and Practice","article_published_time":"2012-02-09T22:17:22+00:00","article_modified_time":"2022-03-22T01:10:51+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/2012-01-28-17.09.37-225x300.jpg","type":"","width":"","height":""}],"author":"morgan","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"morgan","Est. reading time":"3 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Article","@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/#article","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/"},"author":{"name":"morgan","@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/15fce334735dd60ce7bb5712c44a62dd"},"headline":"Etching Brass","datePublished":"2012-02-09T22:17:22+00:00","dateModified":"2022-03-22T01:10:51+00:00","mainEntityOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/"},"wordCount":577,"publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/15fce334735dd60ce7bb5712c44a62dd"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/2012-01-28-17.09.37-225x300.jpg","keywords":["art","brass etching","electricity","steampunk"],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/","url":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/","name":"Etching Brass - Theory and Practice","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/2012-01-28-17.09.37-225x300.jpg","datePublished":"2012-02-09T22:17:22+00:00","dateModified":"2022-03-22T01:10:51+00:00","breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/2012-01-28-17.09.37.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/02\/2012-01-28-17.09.37.jpg","width":"1920","height":"2560","caption":"Toner stencils"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/2012\/02\/etching-brass\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Etching Brass"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/#website","url":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/","name":"Theory and Practice","description":"Exploring life through science and art.","publisher":{"@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/15fce334735dd60ce7bb5712c44a62dd"},"potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":["Person","Organization"],"@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/15fce334735dd60ce7bb5712c44a62dd","name":"morgan","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0da7fa0a0a07a8497d51de4300111d978b649e254fc1afa26dc67f3b83d24c38?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/0da7fa0a0a07a8497d51de4300111d978b649e254fc1afa26dc67f3b83d24c38?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"morgan"},"logo":{"@id":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/"},"url":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/author\/morgan\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":604,"href":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125\/revisions\/604"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/morganredfield.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}