Etching with Micah Kirby

hello i am micah kirby i am the electro etching instructor and also co-teacher of inlay with chuck bruce at william holland today we're going to go over the process of electro etching um i'm going to use the most basic the most basic way of electro etching um that we can do there are multiple masking processes which i'll go into um but we're going to deal with just one today so we're going to do a cuff which is right here either one of these two this pattern here is what i'm going to be working on but i also want to emphasize on this i'm choosing this particular project because you can do multiple things i like to use this as a component it's a component based process where i can take something that i've electro etched and use it in multiple um pieces i can do it basically just your straight electro etched cuff like right here take the same process and make a little little bead kind of beads for earrings um a combination with uh inlay some cufflinks right here that i've done with some purple heart um and then um also using etched pieces so you can see here a piece like this and use it for a back plate on my you know my box pendant here you can see it's just a you know sample of a box pendant and i used that to etch the back back plate i have a just a basic pendant here i could do just a jump ring or here what i've done is make a little tube bail on this but this basic piece was just a 10 gauge electro etched silver cut and slightly domed and then here is a piece of what would be a bail so the sky is the limit really when it comes to what you can do with this process you can see the two pendants also that are in the in the picture there unfinished of course but but the multitude of things that you can do also with this process you can create your own texture plates and the process that i'll be using today um will be the exact way you can make your texture plate so all you have to do then is just use a piece of brass instead of a piece of silver that i'll be using today and create a texture plate i want to show you the materials that are necessary all the materials are very basic uh well most of the materials are very basic contact paper just your regular clear contact paper drugstore lowe's walmart any place that has contact paper aluminum foil you know you can get that anywhere um if you're scared of your drawing skills have a template one of these i'm going to demonstrate how i can use this to create my pattern then these here deco color markers are enamel paint pens these are what we're going to use to create our pattern um these are available on amazon and i think my website or my if you my email will be available through uh through this um and if if anyone's interested and can't find them they're they're they should be fairly easy to find on amazon um they have different tips you have a fine tip large tip and there's a medium tip so you can have a combination of those and then teflon sheet here um i'll explain what this is for later also available on amazon uh then for a uh you'll need just like an old gift card um and a pair of scissors then um basically those are the the basic materials we're going to need we're going to be using something called cupric nitrate this if you are interested in you can get on amazon and if you also if you if you get some before classes are going email me and i can tell you how to mix mix it up it comes in a powder form but amazon has this available cupric nitrate is what it's called this is good for silver it will etch anything um but the reason i like the kuprik nitrate i typically use this just for my silver because what i can do is reclaim the silver and if you take my class i can show you how to do that we're not going to go through that process today there is also you can make a saltwater solution that's how i usually do my brass copper bronze you can even do steel if you want to i don't really use steel but if you wanted to do steel you could but i would use a saltwater solution for that because i try to just keep my kubrick nitrate just for silver so those are the basic materials we're going to need so what we're going to do i'm going to be using some 16 gauge silver and i'm going to do what is the well first off we're going to draw on our pattern and i want to show you the couple of ways i can do that and then we're going to go into the packaging what i like to call the packaging is this example here where this is what will go into our solution very thing like this and i'll explain this once we get there but i want to start with the the drawing of whatever pattern that you want to use so some people are scared of their drawing skills um you don't need you don't need exceptional drawing skills i try not to do like anything real uh difficult anyway when i am doing this process i find a more simple basic um just line um here are some examples here you know just very abstract you know straight i come from a drawing background art um i went to art school um so the thing i really love about this process this is a way i could bring in drawing into this the medium of jewelry metal um so that that that's that's part of the love that i found with this process for myself there are a couple of other methods of getting your image on there again we're not going to go really over those today those require certain machines but if anyone anyone's familiar with something called a silhouette or a cricut one of those two items you can create little things like this where you just do a little decal that you can then use just regular um images available this one is a celtic symbol triquetra you know so um we're not going to go over this process but this is just one of the examples um what we're doing today doesn't require any type of printer or anything like that so um so i showed you my example here um i'm going to be doing for myself here i'm going to be doing this little texture pattern here this is what i'm going to work on today but um to show you that you don't really need any drawing experience i am just going to choose one of these shapes here do a circle take my deco color markers again available on amazon i'm going to use the fine tipped one and they're actually fairly easy to tell which ones are which um they've got little symbols here the tip there and you can see the tip on this one shows the fine tip so and then they also have a very like almost extra large tip i don't really use that one very often i do use it and i can show you where i use that but um these two are the basic ones i use for the most part so you know you're worried about your drawing skills you're like what do i want to do well um i'll just make a little circle here i could fill this whole thing in if i wanted to but i'm just going to do some you know circles i'm going to let it blow it off so it dries a little bit and you'll notice that i'm just kind of i'm just winging this not really not even really giving much thought to it it off because when i uh it will smear if you're not careful and you can change your sizes you know just kind of i'm just doing that so i don't smear anything you know and i can just keep going from here um now you could even mix in if you wanted to you could even mix in another shape if you want but i think i'm just going to stick with the the little circle pattern here that i'm going with and basically i mean i can just keep going with that but there's a you know just your basic little pattern here um now what i was talking about using the large tip that i don't really use that often but there are times when what i'll do if you see here i've just made this black you know so i've just taken one of those the large tip and covered this whole piece covered this little part right here you can take a little scribe and then just make some i like to make these little uh very sketchy uh type of marks here it's a pattern that i tend to uh really enjoy um sometimes it's kind of meditative just mess around with it but um this will create a slightly different texture um but you know so it's basically the same pattern as here but it does create a different look also i have some pieces here of just some hand-drawn pieces um they're the same they're the same basic same image but what i've done was one using this process and then this one using this process i mean you can kind of see how they've um these are very whimsical i mean you could almost have like you know if you wanted to have you know something that your child made for you you could uh you could have them draw a picture for you or just some real simple you know heart with some dots and it actually you know makes a really nice kind of little whimsical type of you know this would probably be an earring could be a pendant whichever so you don't need to have a good you don't have to be scared of your drawing skills here it's kind of amazing with what people do in class sometimes they surprise themselves so um those are um basically the processes that i use i like to use this drawing process mostly in everything i do um i can be more original i don't have to use just your everyday you know commercial clip art so and then it i think it makes it a lot more unique pieces um so that's that's why i like to use this so from there um i'm going to use some 16 gauge silver that i just cut into three quarter you can use whatever width you want i mean you can go one inch you could go two inches um this is just three quarters width um 16 gauge silver and you can use any gauge um if i was going to be um making a piece of sheet where i um cut my earrings which i'll i'll show you either a pendant or earrings um this is 24 gauge this is 24 gauge um so you can do this in whatever gauge you just got to be careful about how how deep you etch if you've got thinner material and i'll kind of go into the the time frame but for what we're doing today it's gonna be 16 gauge so i've already started my pattern a little bit here um just so i didn't have to draw the whole thing why we are here um what i like to do just to kind of protect my surface is use a little piece of cardboard um i take down my little piece of metal this just keeps it from moving on me while i'm trying to draw my pattern on and tape that down so like i said i've already kind of started my pattern here so i'm just going to continue with it i've used the combination of my um medium tip and that gives me um if you might be able to see it better on this one that gives me my little broad lines here these are the thick lines or my broad tip and then i'll use my fine tip to do these little small lines here so so use my broad one rail here real quick you know do a couple little just little swooshes don't have to make the sound effects or you can if you want um and then take the small one and just do little just and move it around a little bit and i sometimes like to do little sound effects as i'm doing this but um again uh like i said this is for me it ends up become a little bit meditative i guess i can just sit there and just gonna do this these little little swooshes little judges or whatever you want to call them it really creates a really interesting pattern and texture and again it's like i mean you can see this this really is not taking me long at all um i mean i think this whole process you know for me to to do this whole piece here is probably you know less than 15 minutes so i've got my pattern on there um i want it to dry a little bit but now i need to uh be able to etch it okay so this is uh where a lot of people get messed up in the process people find this uh this process this part of it a little difficult um it's not ready once you get used to it it's not that hard but but it is it is one of those things sometimes you kind of have to think about it as you're doing it so i have to create my packaging if i were to just try to um put this in the solution as it is one it wouldn't do anything because we are creating a circuit um and if there's no way to close that circuit you don't get any power it won't it won't etch there are actually processes that if you put in a solution it would etch over a long period of time but that would take forever so um what we want to do now is create our package so with this what i've done is i've cut some of the contact paper and i just a lot of the contact paper you know you have your measurements and stuff on here i just need it wide enough for my piece here so this one is actually a little wider than i need it but that's fine once i get it all packaged up i'll you'll see i'll just trim it up that part is not you don't have to be exact with this part um so you notice here you know my cutting lines are not even it doesn't matter because this isn't going to be anything this isn't going to be anything important in the final prop and the final product it is important in um the process of etching but um once you're yeah this doesn't make any difference no one ever going to see this all right so i've got my two pieces the first piece what i need to do is kind of just find the center of it i'm just going to do a little spool crease and i'm going to i told you this is three quarters of an inch wide okay i need to make a slit here for my piece of aluminum foil my piece of aluminum foil will act as the is the connector um this is what my on my rectifier which i'll show you when we get there this is what the becomes my anode this is what the alligator clip for the positive ends up attaching to all right but we'll get to that so i need to make a split a place for that um we need to remember that this is also metal and we are going to be etching this solution will etch away any metal um so we need to make sure that this piece is protected because if any of the solution gets back onto this piece it will stop the etching process so and that's basically what this packaging will do it protects this piece and it also protects the areas of your this in this case the piece of silver the piece that we're etching it will protect the areas that we don't want etched so everything that's exposed will metal will be etched away everything that's covered won't be so so i've got this three quarters of an inch wide i need to make a space a place for my aluminum to go through um i need to make a little slit here now i don't want this cut to be real big um i don't want it to come outside i'll show you i don't want it to come outside the the perimeter of my piece here so a good rule of thumb i usually i try to make my slit maybe uh a third one third of whatever the width of my material is this being three quarters um i wouldn't make my slit more than a quarter of an inch so it's a good rule of thumb there so then you've got a quarter of an inch on each side there to protect your little piece of aluminum foil here so uh and i don't measure it i just apply it so you know make my life with so and yeah that that is about as wide as i want to go and you can kind of even you know if you're worried about it you can always kind of like look at it you know put it up to it and be like okay that's that works um so now um all i did was cut me a strip of aluminum foil you know now of course uh if we look here this is a little wide it's a little wide for the slip that i've got here not a big deal i can just make it fit just cut a little bit off again this does not have to be pretty either we just need it to we just need it to fit through that little slot slit slot whichever you want to call it now i find the easy way to do that um and real quick um if everyone is familiar with contact paper we know one side is you know not sticky the paper side here is the sticky side the sticky side is what is what our piece will attach to it won't attach to the non-sticky side it seems obvious but sometimes that does mess people up um so i'm just starting and actually as i'm doing this it needs to i need to thin it out just a little more this part does not have to be pretty just get rid of those little pieces and i've just made it a little thinner narrower we'll say and yeah so that should fit and i'm just kind of pushing it through there we go and you don't need a whole lot so once you know people ask me um you know like well how much of a piece do we need you know out here um basically this just needs to make good contact to the back to the back side of our um piece that we're etching you don't need a whole lot um this what a little over a half inch here um is more than enough so um you could actually have it you know a quarter of an inch whatever it doesn't really matter um so just as long as you have good contact is the important part here so i've got my little slit here i know this side is on my sticky side and i want my tab to come out on that sticky side all right because this needs to make contact with our piece so i'm just going to lay this down once i've got that through i'm just going to lay this out i like to control where my i like my tab to be straight i'm a little anal that way ocd that way so now i just need to get the sticky exposed what i do want to be careful here you want to be careful just pulling this off because if i just pull it off and this gets caught it will rip it now of course this piece we've got a nice long piece here but you know it will shorten my little uh connector so what i like to do here is i'm pulling it up but when i get kind of where this tab is i'm just gonna rip i'm just gonna tear that so that one and that way and like that and then it doesn't even create an issue i do that um people say i make that look easy i feel like it is very easy but sometimes people have a problem with it so i just tap you know just put that down so now that's kind of stuck in place so my sticky side is exposed so this is where we're at and then this is my piece of aluminum foil um people will have a tendency of wanting to use this as a handle don't because if you rip it then we're gonna have to repackage it you're gonna have to do this process over a cut more pieces not that it takes real long but then this is kind of a waste of time sometimes so this is trash so then i'm gonna i want to avoid air bubbles if i can um turn that that way and this is where the teflon sheet comes into play here um it's great because the contact paper won't really it will stick to this but it won't stick to your uh your your surface which then if you were to try to do this on just a table you're gonna have a pain of trying to get this up and you'll see why so um i'm going to lay this down i try to just get this area where can you see here a little bit i'm just trying to get that centered all right um now i haven't i haven't pushed this down yet it's just kind of loosely laid down here but um this is the tab here um that is what i want to make good contact with my um with my piece so i'm just gonna take my gift card old gift card and we're just gonna um you just want to make sure to keep those air bubbles out so that's all i'm really doing here go down so i know i've got good contact here i can tell that it's nice and adhered um and so from this part here you know if you were to try to take this and just put it into your solution your uh your back piece here is exposed your piece of foil here um if you were to just put that in your foil would etch away um you'd lose contact and the etching process would just stop so we need to protect this little piece so i've got a second piece of contact paper pretty much the exact same size that then i will put on the back here again i want to avoid air bubbles throw those away in a second um now again this doesn't have to be right exact either i just need to make sure i keep my aluminum foil portion here covered and that's basically what this piece is doing is just making sure to protect our little foil piece so i'm just going to set that there yeah get it started i'm going to hold it up because i want to make sure i try to keep my air bubbles out and so i'm going to take my there card go there you go so i'm just kind of holding it up with my my finger here um you know it's it is kind of touching here a little bit but you know it hasn't i haven't fully pressed it down so i can still if there's like any air bubbles i might be able to hear them maybe if i just now if i were to have like an air bubble like here or something or some random air bubble here it's not a huge issue um the only time that there would be an issue is if you had like a little crease coming from your edge into the middle here that would be the only time that that would that could be an issue because that could create a little path for your solution to get into if you don't have that then it's not anything to really worry about if you do get a little air random air bubble in here somewhere all right so all right so basically got the package there um now we need to get it off the teflon now the nice thing about this i like to flip it over and you know you can kind of give it a little push here just make sure you get a nice good adhesion onto that back side because we don't want the backside to get etched and this is the beautiful thing about this stuff it keeps it from being a pain of like if you were to ever like i said if you try to do this on your surface it would be a pain to get this off um so basically this is where we're at with the packaging again i hesitate from using this as a handle this is a little wide um you know it might fit into my container it might fit in there i'm gonna cut it first but i'm just going to trim up these edges here just to make it fit in a little a little easier so there is waste in this process and again this part doesn't have to be pretty either now i do like to keep a you know you know at least an inch of material around um that's not a it's not a huge deal if it's not the only thing that can happen um is you know you don't you really want to keep my solution from like seeping in any areas and so if i have a little bit around the outside it seems to help keep that from happening i do see actually i do see maybe a couple of air bubbles here yep if you can i don't know if you can see it on the camera but i do have a couple of air bubbles i'm not going to worry about because they they won't they're not going to cause any problem for me so i'm just going to i'll just leave them there now you're gonna mess with them cut a little bit off the end and this is basically the uh i would say for myself sometimes this is the hardest process this is the hardest part of this process um because sometimes people get it reversed or they they want to not put it on the sticky side or something but so from here we are now ready to etch um so i'm gonna take this over here so again i explained that the cupric nitrate available on amazon um if you email me i could always let you know how to do the mixing of it and then i have these copper plates this copper plate a large one here for this particular process but you can have small ones also um i just made these myself 24 gauge copper um with the 24 gauge copper then i cut off with like a strip here like that um and then i just used wire um copper wire and created my little reddits here to create my tab here to you know hold things up um again this does not have to be pretty um we just need a you know we mean really you could use just about any piece of copper you wanted i mean you wouldn't even necessarily have to make a tab like this you could take just your sheet um a long enough sheet fold it over and you just have a full sheet there just as long as you have something to clip to you can use just use any sheet you want so to give you some terminology this would be my cathode this is your negative all right so this is what your black is going to attach to um this is a rectifier um the nice thing about the rectifier is you can adjust your uh amperage um the another way here is just a a an ac dc um i can't remember what they call these um not a transformer but a uh converter basically it's like your your old uh you know battery charger type of thing um you can get these on amazon and it's got a little lead connector here that you can just get little leads connect that and it just creates uh you know takes your ac dc current to or yeah an ac current and changes it to direct current these maybe maybe five bucks you can also use d cell batteries um the only thing about these um is the amperage that it uses because the amperage is what's important and i'll kind of go into that when you can see that you can see the numbers on the rectifier um the uh you just you can't control the amount it's got the amperage that it has and these are all you know it says on them this is a this one is amps is one am six volts one amp right and you won't need any more than one amp um the idea here um the more amps that you have the faster the edge now what happens when you have more amperage you can get a rougher edge so good rule of thumb here is low and slow it's kind of like with your barbecue so when i set this up here when i initially get my rectifier if you intend on purchasing one of these plug it in hook it up turn it on um i like to use less than one amp all right so how do i set that up um your top here is voltage which i never really pay attention to because the voltage isn't really important in this process your bottom here is the amperage that is what's important so the way i set that up i would take my two ends and just touch them together so we can see we got some numbers here all right um i can turn the knob up up up up up and that would be you know 1.01 amp um i don't need i don't need that much amperage um i mean i could do it that way but it it you know like i said low and slow is the way to go so i'm gonna back it down and it's real easy here um just kind of tap it back is that is that a seven okay from here from here looks like a one um and i'm just gonna go point eight point eight amps all right it's plenty plenty there yeah you could go you could go 0.9 um um really it doesn't really matter i think at that point as long as it's under one amp i think you're going to get a nice smoother etch so i've got my amperage set just by doing that so i know here that's what my amperage should be at um so now i'm ready to hook up so i'll take the negative the negative the black goes to the copper the copper plate was also called the uh cathode then the piece itself the piece that i'm matching is my positive the red and i'm going to put that in the solution and i'm going to put it all the way down just to it covers the top just want my whole piece submerged all right fold that over and i'm going to connect the positive it doesn't matter which one you connect first honestly um you can if you wanted to it doesn't matter you could connect your positive first then your then your um black doesn't really matter so this connected you heard that little click it's a good sign it lets me know should be the eight amps we are now etching what i like to do here um is set a timer now i've already done um doing this enough uh if i'm doing something small i might set an eight minute timer just a good roundabout time um for this particular piece the more surface area you're trying to etch the longer it takes to etch smaller the surface area the less time it takes so um i don't ever try to you know there are calculations you could do to figure out your surface area i don't even mess with that um for this um i'll set a timer for 20 minutes come back and check it and just from my experience i know a piece like this it's probably going to take about 30 30 maybe 40 minutes um so but i'll set my timer and i'll come back and check it so from there once that that goes i will end up with what looks like this um after i've let it go for my 20 30 minutes dental tool i'll just take a dental tool and you can get it um harbor freight have them or if you you know there might be other places you can get dental tools from but harbor freights good good and cheap you don't need anything expensive for this i just use these to kind of test my depth so i'll kind of go in with the the dental tool and i can feel and you can see i've got a little i've got uh where it kind of grabs you know so i can feel that there is um i don't know i'm not sure what the millimeter i mean this would be less than a millimeter in depth but um but i can tell that it's a nice deep etch and so that's how i would test my my depth here would be with that um real quick on the solution itself um i said that for this particular piece it's 30 exactly 38 minutes is what i did for this piece um you have the solution here the solution will if you can see this one's kind of cloudy um because i've already etched this piece you can do multiple etchings the solution will get saturated and you'll need to filter it so the easiest way to do that is take a coffee filter and a funnel i would just pour my solution through the coffee filter into my other container and let that filter that is the easiest way to clean the solution and that'll work for a couple of times after you've done maybe two three etchings you would need to get a vacuum pump but we're not going to go all into that process if anybody's interested in that we can you need to take the class or you can email me if you have any questions on on that part of the process the nice thing about the kubrick nitrate as long as it is filtered and cleaned after you know after your you know a couple of uses if you know you're not going to be using it filter it put it into a container i like to use old windshield wiper nice thick plastic one i mean that's a good travel stuff so this way i know it's better than just a gallon jug of like your milk jug that's what i would use to to store my solution but i would filter my solution put it in here and it'll be good for it'll be good forever as long as you just keep cleaning the solution um and then from that you'll have your silver gunk that is produced in your coffee filter keep that coffee filter you can reclaim that silver you know you can i just kind of collect a whole got a whole bag of it filters with the silver in it when i get enough i'll probably just have it sent out and have it refined for me you can do it yourself um if you want to take the time to do that i'll probably just have mine sent out and then you can reuse that silver so that's the nice thing about this that you can reclaim that silver um and you can you know thing i love about it is get a nice unique piece um so from here i would need to clean it off okay so we're back um so we've got it etched i need to clean this off um acetone won't take off this enamel paint pen only thing is going to work is mineral spirits it doesn't have to be this particular brand you just need mineral spirits to do it so um and let's get rid of all the what ends up that technical term for what the pin is is a resist so we're going to take off our resist [Music] so here's what we've got so far um i'll go ahead and take this off so and also i'll clean this off i'm just use a little bit of dawn i actually will probably use my brass brush you don't have to use a brass brush um but i think it will show you better of what you end up with last brush here dry it off a little bit and so this is what we've ended up with so again nice you know real simple real simple pattern i think it creates a really cool effect um and it doesn't it doesn't take much uh drawing skills to uh to be able to do that so from here what i would do um to create my cuff i would you know have me to clean up my need to clean up my edges take off my corners um and then form that so then from there we'll walk and in that process of walking magically it appears this is what you end up with um so after i clean up my edges and my corners then this is um and tumble it i like to tumble it now um from here also you could um patina um so then it really makes a nice uh effect if you get like the nice dark shadows in your low points you polish the high points yes perfect example um so this is kind of what you get here especially is is that effect um and so this uh one of the reasons i really chose this as a demo today is you take a larger piece and like this and then you can cut out i'll show you uh i'm gonna cut out another little piece but uh start with some pendants or earrings um this is where i was talking about doing this as a component based kind of process so we'll go over here to the cutter like i said from from what we've done i can cut myself uh a disc well multiple discs so like i said um from here you know i'm just going to create my last little piece here you know dome that i like to use um in this if uh if i'm doming if i use a metal one a metal dapping set i want to put a piece of leather in here because it'll mar up my uh my texture my pattern so in this i'll just use a wooden one and real simple i like to do this over the supported part of my desk anvil or you know some other real support nice domed little piece that will make my third little part for my pendant here go over here might have to clean up the edges sometimes because you know after the disc cutter of course you can kind of but this one actually feels good but i've already got another piece here and i would take my 1.8 punch make myself a little sometimes you get a burr on the outside but i want to clean that up this one seems okay take a jump ring and this is basically you know you know cold connection get yourself a jump ring or a simple bale you can make your own bale this process i just used a commercial bail but if i was doing this for myself um i might use i might make my own bail for it um where was that piece so i could you know take what i did here use my bail pliers form this soldering add jump ring all that stuff then create my bail my handmade bail for my for my pendant um there's that and so like we see like with some of these finished pieces here um this is why i really like this piece uh this process i can do all kinds of different things with this process i can use different patterns i can create my texture plates um you notice this is a different pattern here i just did up a whole sheet i can go through just like we did cut out myself whatever size disks that i don't i need stuff so you can see um you know really the the sky is the limit really when it comes to i uh with this process and how you can use it so um yeah i guess that's kind of uh where we're that's where we're at with the process um yeah like i said you can email me if you have any other questions and uh i guess for now that's uh that's a wrap

Channel: William Holland School of Lapidary Arts

Views: 925

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Id: JcB7Z05kOIA

Length: 53min 20sec (3200 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 25 2020