etching - confused newbie

[Rick]

Originally Posted by Yannis

Etching long blades is really a problem, specially if you cant unmount the hilt.

(For "newbies": Do NOT touch a hilt from organic material with acid!)

For knifes i use a big jar were i can bleach all the blade and feel safe about the hilt. This way a solution 1/3 of vinegar for few hours gave me exelent results. Maybe a different solution or time could do something better. I dont know.

I prefer vinegar for 2 main reasons:
1. It is cheap and easy to find
2. In my country we produce a lot and it is "traditional" to use vinegar for thousand of actions, among them to clean things (my wife use it for cleaning the carpets )

A friend sugest that for a long blade we have to make a "bath" from adhesive tape like this: [_] where [ and ] are the sides of the tape and _ is the blade. I have not tried it yet but it looks ok and I will do it.

Yannis, do you have plastic waste plumbing tube material available in your country ?
Lengths of this material with a cap glued on one end makes a marvelous and inexpensive re-useable bathing chamber for etching .
Cut to needed length !