Etching Revisited

Once in awhile our jewelry fabrication class at Civic Arts revisits etching. I always enjoy it, get all excited about doing more, purchase the material, try it once--or twice, and then put it away for several months. This time I picked up where I left off the last time and this time I added bimetal which I learned to make during Metals Week. The silver on the bottom of this piece is thicker than the copper piece. They were soldered together with medium silver solder and run through the rolling mill.

Copper Soldered Silver To Make Bi-Metal

After flattening  the bimetal piece with a mallet, I applied a design that was printed on PressNPeel paper. The design was a photograph of an ancient Mimbres Valley Indian Pottery shard from New Mexico. I can't wait to place it in etchant and see what happens!

Silver and Copper Bimetal With Print of Mimbres Pottery on PNP Iron-On

Once the design was printed on the Press N Peel paper, I cut out a geometrical design and placed it, printed side down, on a prepared piece of copper. To prepare the copper, I cleaned it with soap and water, scrubbed it with  steel wool, and cleaned it further with rubbing alcohol. Then, I placed the PNP design on the prepared piece and heated it with an iron. To make the design adhere better, I pushed it (burnished it) with a wood tongue depressor.  

Now it was ready to take a dip in the etchant. Dip is an understatement--it was more like a six hour soak. I have decided that it would have been a shorter time, a neater time, and a much better outcome if I had used thinner copper. It took way too long to etch any part of the design. Plain copper seems to etch much quicker than the homemade bi-metal.

Tomorrow I'm going to try polishing some of the silver edges and dip the piece in Liver of Sulfer. I first used Silver Black on it and am not excited about the results. I also think that it would have been a crisper etching if I had just used copper, so maybe I'll try that again. I think trying something new just to see what happens is fun and exciting! What do you think?

Day 3 Idyllwild Arts Program, Metals Week

I have lost track of which picture belongs to which day and from the very first day, Harold O'Connor demonstrated his skillful use of his breath controlled torch. So here's a good picture of Harold and his torch. He told us this is a European technique and we could tell he is highly skilled at using it.

Harold O'Connor and His Breath Controlled Torch

Copper Laminated to Silver and Carved

After we tried making a 3-dimensional form and then reticulating silver, we were introduced to making our own bi-metal from copper and silver. Here is an example of copper soldered to silver, run through the rolling mill several times and then carved to show the silver design underneath. The color is a torch patina on the copper.

The natural progression in making bi-metal was 18K gold on silver. The gold is a very thin gauge which is then fused to 12 gauge silver. First the silver is annealed three times to build up a layer of fine silver. Fine silver fuses easier than sterling.

Gold sheet fused to Sterling Silver

The bubbles that are visible may disappear in the rolling mill process. If not, then the artist works with them to create a design.

18K Gold Laminated on Sterling Silver

The result can be stunning-- especially if Harold O'Connor is the artist demonstrating the technique. In between these demonstrations we were cutting, filing, annealing, pickling, and working with the metal to create pieces with carved bi-metal designs. The result was quite satisfying and I will be showing you some of my work tomorrow.