[Jewelry making - Article 00340] - Re: [Orchid] Etching solution for brass and silver

[Len and Judy Bjorkman]

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    R.R., there have a number of Orchid discussions on this subject.
    Here are my opinions. 

    For brass, ferric chloride does very, very nicely. It will etch as
    much as you want it to. It is available in handy bottles at
    RadioShack. It will not etch silver -- for that you need ferric
    nitrate, available only at chemical specialty places. 

    To do both at once, you would need dilute (50:50) nitric acid. But
    it is hard to find and nastier to work with. With ferric chloride, be
    sure to wear rubber gloves -- it stains, among other things. 

    I would bet that the catalogue pickle solution is sodium bisulphate,
    the same chemical as is your pool acid (Ph Minus). Neither this, nor
    citric acid, are strong enough to etch satisfactorily (although, if
    you leave something in your pickle long enough, it will very slowly
    begin to etch and can be destroyed over a period of several hours).
    However, the citric acid is sometimes recommended to add to the
    ferric chloride to improve the etch on base metal. 

    See some of the following sites for more info. 

    www.ganoksin.com/borisat/nenam/safe-etching.htm (article by Gail    
    Nelson) 
    www.LapidaryJournal.com 

    (look for articles by Katherine Palochak on low-tech photoetching,
    where there will be some discussion of the 

    use of ferric chloride; look up Katherine's name in the the Orchid
    Archives, too) 

All the best,
Judy Bjorkman

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