[Jewelry making - Article 00911] - Re: [Orchid] Inconsistent Etching Results

[Karen Christians]

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Hi Linda,

    Your nitric bath might need a touch up. Couple of questions: 

    1) is your nitric bath sitting open to the air? 

    2) do you pour your solution back into an empty glass bottle and cap
    it off? 

    If you answered yes to the first question, then I suggest storing it
    in a closed glass container. 

    If you answered no, then I would ask, what kind of water are you
    diluting your acid. Regular tap water has all kinds of weird things
    in it these days. 

    To get consistent results, I would do the following. 

    1) Remix a new solution with fresh nitric and de-ionized water. This
    is not the same as distilled, but close. You can use distilled just
    fine, but de-ionized is better. Depending on where you live, a
    university or bio science firm can give you a gallon for free. Tell
    them what you are using it for and they often can give you friendly
    suggestions. You might even make a sale of your jewelry! 

    2) Make sure of course that your solution is stored in a closed
    glass container. Again, a university or bio science company could
    give you a clean glass container from one of their chemicals,
    provided it is scrupulously clean!!! If they cannot, order one from a
    biological supply catalog, Fisher, Perkin Elmer, they are all online
    anyway. 

    3) Forget nitric and use ferric nitrate instead. Works great, just
    slow. 

    4) Removing PnP blue. Finger nail polish removal is fine, which in
    its pure state is just diluted acetone. Get a quart of pure acetone
    from the hardware store. It's handy stuff to have around anyway. PnP
    blue is plastic and acetone will eat some kinds of plastic. Do a
    little test first. The other is just burning it off. It's just
    plastic, and should burn away with very little heat. 

    I cannot stress enough regarding ventilation, safety glasses, etc.,
    when you are working with acids, but you probably know this already.
    Think of me as the flight attendant on your 62nd airplane ride. You
    know the stuff, but its good to locate the exit doors in case of an
    emergency. 

    Lastly, when you are performing tasks of this nature, you have to
    get out of the "I'm an artist" mindset and think of yourself as a lab
    tech. You are absolutely correct to post this to the group. I can't
    tell you how many times with my students, that it is one thing to
    design a piece of jewelry for which your artistic merits sing, but
    once you do, you need to switch modes and become a mechanic,
    scientist, metallurgist, etc. 

    Deconstructing your designs and figuring out the order everything
    must be built is what makes well crafted work. What makes you the
    artist is the accident in between and working towards making them a
    feature. 

    Good luck. Write again if you have questions. 

-k

Karen Christians
M E T A L W E R X
50 Guinan St.
Waltham, MA  02451
Ph. 781/891-3854 Fax 3857
http://www.metalwerx.com/
Jewelry/Metalarts School & Cooperative Studio


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