Doors and mirrors pt. 2

Here's that mirror I was making. The corners are brass, but the lighting disguises it.

Doors and mirrors

We've had these new doors put on at the front of my house, opening onto the new deck. They look really good. They're cedar on the inside, and powder coated steel on the outside (wood weathers woefully). Anyway, the doors came in, of all things, maple packing. I like maple, it's cheaper than other, darker woods, but takes a stain really nicely, and is good to work with, so I kept the packing. I had two very small pieces (about 1200mm together, and 40mm wide) of it that I looked for a use for, and, after not too long, I found it looking me in the face. A mirror! I have this old mirror, without a frame of any sort, sitting on top of a speaker in my room, and I've been meaning to frame it for a while. I started it the other day. It's a very plain, simple design. Mitred corners, mirror held in a groove in the middle of each side. But I'm planning on some interesting flourishes at the joints. I haven't quite decided yet, I'm tossing up between a couple of different ideas I had revolving around brass pins, but, failing that, I'll just go with brass corners. I'll give it a new jarrah stain when I'm done.

Brass etching

In a fit of procrastination this evening, I decided that I would do a brass etching with the brass that appeared in the mail yesterday. I went with the airship pilot's badge from earlier. The transfer was really good, the magazine peeled off in one piece, which was a really good feeling. Here's a picture of the magazine page after peeling, with the brass next to it:












I put it into the tank with my new plate holder (left, lovingly turned down on a school lathe), and switched the power supply on, it drew between 1.5 and 2.5 Amps the entire time, and built crud up on the surface a lot faster than the copper did. Some copper also rose to the surface of the brass. There was no surface pitting either. This etch took about 15 minutes.






In case you're unfamiliar with the difference between copper and brass, brass has zinc as well as copper, and looks gold rather than red. The brass is at the top, and copper at the bottom:

















Here is the finished etching, after being 'inked'. More on inking later.

A plan for the future

I was talking with a friend of mine recently, and discovered that her father is a lithographer, and, as such, does copper etchings. She said that he did acid etches, which piqued my interest, so I have done a little research, and come up with this. It's called the 'Edinburgh Etch', and uses Ferric Chloride as the 'acid'. I say 'acid' because it is actually a salt, not an acid. Anyway, I shudder to say it, but...Dick Smith...sell bottles of Ferric Chloride, so I shall purchase some, and start tinkering.

On a different note, a package came from A&E Metal today, containing a sheet of 1mm brass, and a sheet of 0.5mm nickel silver (which actually contains no silver), and some brooch backs. I intend to try and electroplate the nickel silver onto brass and copper. But we shall see.