etching - confused newbie

Rivkin · 9th January 2005, 10:40 PM

Well, here is what I've got:

a. Dunking works way better than rubbing.
Rubbing produces yellowish-red cast, dunking is more blackish.

b. Vinegar produced arch-horrible yellow color, which looked like 5 year old rust.

c. FeCL was way more controllable - the color dependent on the time spent in the mixture - less than 2 minutes - simply acsents the pattern, 2-4 minutes - yellowish rust, 4-10 minutes - black+yellow.

In the end I had two "good" times - at the end of 15th 1 minute dunking the pattern appeared with no major changes in blade's color from grey. However the pattern was not really well defined.

After that I've started to increase the time in the bath until the blade got blackish - with the full pattern displayed. May be in time I'll reetch the blade to more grayish color.

9th January 2005, 10:40 PM	#13
Rivkin Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 655	Well, here is what I've got: a. Dunking works way better than rubbing. Rubbing produces yellowish-red cast, dunking is more blackish. b. Vinegar produced arch-horrible yellow color, which looked like 5 year old rust. c. FeCL was way more controllable - the color dependent on the time spent in the mixture - less than 2 minutes - simply acsents the pattern, 2-4 minutes - yellowish rust, 4-10 minutes - black+yellow. In the end I had two "good" times - at the end of 15th 1 minute dunking the pattern appeared with no major changes in blade's color from grey. However the pattern was not really well defined. After that I've started to increase the time in the bath until the blade got blackish - with the full pattern displayed. May be in time I'll reetch the blade to more grayish color.