Moving Forward With Etching

Here's a photo of the copper plate etching that I was working on today. The glassblowers were off, and I was working back in our little sub-patio by myself. The furnace where they keep the clear glass molten day and night, seven days a week, has finally given out. The elements need to be replaced about every six months, sometimes less, and it has now been six months. They have to turn the furnace off, let it cool down, chisel out the old glass, replace the elements, and let the glass heat up again before they can blow again. The glassblower told me it takes five days. So, I guess they won't be able to blow again until Wednesday of next week. I'm off myself tomorrow and Monday, but I suppose I'm going to be spending the rest of the time alone.

Now that I'm use to having them there, it's rather lonely back in the corner by myself. But I did get quite a bit accomplished today, so that's good. I completed the etching that I had drawn on the plate yesterday. It's ready to put in the etching solution. I put the brass on in today. I wore my rubber gloves, but I need baby powder to make it easier to get them on. I put the plate in for two hours. I realized after almost two hours that I had forgotten to put the masking tape on the back of the plate to protect it. However, I knew that the brass takes longer to etch than the copper and so I hope it would be okay. And it seems to have been. The plate doesn't seem noticeably thinner than it was.

The etch on the brass looks as though it turned out well with very little false biting. Even the edges of the plate that usually need to be filed and sanded down were fine. I have noticed on the small amount of brass that I've etched so far that it seems to provide a thin, clean line with little false biting. It will be interesting to see how it prints.

After I had cleaned off the asphaltum, the hard ground, I noticed that there was a red tinge to the grooves. When I etched brass before and then cleaned it, I noticed the lines stayed black in the bottom from the small amount of hard ground left in the grooves. Finally, after studying the plate, I realized that what I was seeing was copper that has bonded into the groves that were etched. Having a thin layer of copper in the bottom of the grooves won't affect the print process I'm sure. However, it's an interesting affect that I might want to exploit when making brass jewelry. That would be a permanent coating in the grooves to show them off. Of course, after awhile, I suppose the copper will tarnish and turn dark, but in the beginning it's bright and red.

I took stock of my plates. I have one larger plate to bite and two smaller copper plates that I've finished drawing on in the last few days. I've started to repair one of my plates from the first go around when I had so much false biting. I've managed to smooth away a great deal of it. I started another plate today. So I'll have five new plates and one repaired one when I go on Monday to print at my friend's house. Well, that is, I have that many now, and I might have several more by Sunday afternoon when I stop working. If I could then eventually make additions of all those, it would be wonderful.