Etched brass as base for engraved side plate

[ddoyle]

Not a traditional technique but interesting enough with lots of applications especially to antiquing or as I am doing to add some depth to simple engraving.

Been working on building furniture for a family set of trade muskets and the side plates had been giving me trouble. Best option would be to purchase good castings for the pittance charged but these are left hand guns  and the canuck peso is in the tank so I really want to develop something I am happy with and save the 200 bucks it would cost . Made a couple versions of engraved plates but was not happy with them. Want something with some depth and texture.

Plan is to combine this Electro- Etching Process with some graver work.

Pictured below is early days but the total time involved is 1 hour. Had some failures of course so this example leaves artistic merit aside. My goal was to learn how to produce clean lines and texture.

Table salt, tap water, battery charger, paint marker were used. 

You can see in the pics that it is possible to create a nice clean line (i.e A in ALR) and that you can either end up with a nice clean flat raised part ( screw pads) or a textured raised parts (scales) depending on how much marker is applies.

 

[Acer Saccharum]

That's an interesting process!

It's hard for me to envision an etched part on a traditional gun. I do see that you're getting some decent relief in your etch. As you said, this was just an experiment to see if it had potential.

There are 'grounds' that etchers use to protect metal from the acid when preparing a printing plate. The entire plate is warmed, coated with ground. When cool, the artist draws through the ground with a stylus to expose the metal to the acid.

Grounds can be gotten (or made) in different consistencies. Also called 'resists', some of the formulas may be painted on. Try a mixture of beeswax and a vegetable oil tinted with India ink to coat the metal with. If your etch process creates heat, the wax resist isn't going to work. Maybe a shellac would be better with heat.

Good luck!

[ddoyle]

Acer, Thanks for the hints on resists. I had run one with nail polish which allows more detail but for the purpose quick strokes with a paint marker keeps it simple.  Mostly just trying to get some texture/depth (with out the skill/effort/time involved in real engraving  ) to make sheet brass serpents have a bit more eye appeal.

Anyone looking to give a sea service pistol the look of blood stains and bilge water could get it quick with this method LOL.

[Hungry Horse]

  I think no matter how much you refine this process, it's going to look like somebody tried to take a shortcut/cheap cut. One of the guys in my gun club built a trade gun with all hand made furniture. His dragon sideplate was cut from an old brass threshold, and detailed with graders, and hand made stamps, and is outstanding. Good gun parts are either going to cost a lot of money, or a lot of time.

   Hungry Horse

[Acer Saccharum]

An etched side plate will never look like an engraved or chiseled one. Tools and methods ALWAYS leave their fingerprint.

Please do note that spectacular work can be done with acid etching; swords and armor were etched long before etching was used as a printmaking method.

[ddoyle]

Hungry,

Having looked at about 100 different period serpent side plates I am pretty sure there is lots of room in the breadth of methods and level of skill used to create them to put about anything brass and squiggly on there LOL. Alot of art schools and buyers of high priced prints might disagree that etched material is some way inferior to pure graver cuts.

Truth of the matter is most cast ones available today are VERY distinguishable from originals as is most other furniture we see on NWTGs built today from kits/catalog parts.  It is the rare modern repro by the best builders that begins to approximate an HBC gun. So cheap and short cuts abound.

Any way I am not setting out to fool anybody into thinking a numerich barrel, piece of plain maple, rounded up siler and some thrift store brass is a late model HBC gun  

Just having fun and trying to build cheap, easy guns that capture some of the utility and aura of our past. 

[Hungry Horse]

 Really? Why set the bar so low. Shoot for perfection, and then accept darn good workmanlike results. But you can't expect quality from shortcuts.
 The old guy that helped me, when I was building my first gun, had a pie chart on his shop wall, that was divided into three pieces. The pieces were marked GOOD, FAST, and CHEAP. He often pointed to it and said you could only have two pieces.

    Hungry Horse

[ddoyle]

Hard to argue with the merits of aiming for perfection. Totally agree. It should always be the default goal.


The "but" though is that barring going all the way to casting my own I aint gonna get perfection.

Some day I will go all in,  I do  own a burn out furnace, 10 pounds of investment plaster, bags of wax and a graphite crucible but  I am also currently living in a town house and care-giving 20 hours a day 7 days a week,  with any breaks reserved for hunting.  Sometimes we need to adjust expectations to suit reality.

I do appreciate the sentiment though and your right. As evidence  I have a boat out in the carport which has been driving me crazy for 5 years because I have to look at a shortcut I never should have made every-time I pass by it. Great boat but I do  regret the 50 bucks I saved.

[Hungry Horse]

OK, I did a little checking, with a guy that does some very detailed etching. He said if you want fine detail, use circuit board enchant, from some electronics dealer like Radio Shack. The resist medium is Sharpie ink. That's right, a  regular, or fine point Sharpie pen, does the trick. He said you will have to experiment with brass, because it isn't alway the same composition.

    Hungry Horse

[Pete G.]

Seems like a long way to go about replicating about 30 minutes worth of engraving.

[ddoyle]

Hungry thanks for taking the time to do that,
 I had tried sharpie pens but on a deep etch they did not hold up as well. Circuit board guys use Ferric Chloride or other acids IIRC. I just replaced the hard to aquire chems with salt and electricity.

Pete, I would really like to see what it is possible to produce in 30 minutes, I might be totally missing something. If you mean something like this image it is kind of exactly what I was trying to avoid.  

Remember the Point to this endevour: " To add some depth and texture to simple Engraving"  

How long would it take to engrave the scales do you think? I am a huge fan of good engraving, when a master of the art applies his talent the results are awe inspiring. I however can barely sign my own name in crayon so I am trying to work with what I got. LOL. Heck with out my tongue held at exactly the right angle, a furrowed brow and 100% concentration tying shoe laces can be a challange!

[Mike Brooks]

Those scales weren't engraved, they were sculpted on a master then sand cast from that master. Many skills have been lost in the past 200 years. What you have in mind I personally wouldn't put on a gun. You might consider sculpting a wax then getting it investment cast.... But, it's entirely up to you. You post something like this and you'll get many opinions, some you like and some you don't.

[ddoyle]

I never mind opinions/ ideas though sometimes there is a distinct lack of reading before offering them which can make them less constructive. IMHO Constructive criticism is the driver of all arts and endevours and the stuff should be doled out with a bill it is so valuable.

To focus any future disscussion: Per my oringinal post all I am doing is putting texture/depth on a simple engraving. i.e cutting some lines on a plate that is not 100% smooth instead of a plate that is smooth. The way I am creating the lack of smoothness is by controlling an etch using table salt and DC current.

I also proposed that it could be used to age brass as it replicates the look of heavily de zinc'd brass. i.e  brass that has been in the ocean.  

I am doing this because poorly cast lefthand plates for 4 guns would cost over 200 cdn dollars and wont match the lock size.......... I'd cast them myself but I can't do it in this building.......


I am having heaps of fun with the process.





 





 

[Captchee]

 Good morning .
  Most of the folks I know who do etching  do so as only a way of relieving  heavy material  so as to  achieve more of a 3D effect when finished .  If that’s what your working on then you seem to be well on  your way .
 Though I would agree it seems like the hard way around . However  as you say ;having fun and learning new things is what  its all about .
On the other side of the coin , if what you have showed is as far as you plan to go , I don’t think I would use it . While it may look like  brass that’s been subject to many years of salt age , I cant help but think that  type of age would only come from being  continually submerged or severely neglected

[Acer Saccharum]

I cannot say for sure, but I saw some wheellock plates that looked like background had been etched away. The areas left raised were all engraved with scenery.

Etching for Armor was common, why wouldn't it that translate to firearms?

Precision photo etching services offer pocketing, surface texturing, bas-relief work for decorating plastic injection molds and other purposes.

Acid will undercut the resist, which I see happening with your parts. The photo-etch people are able to renew the resist photographically at regular intervals as the acid eats downward, preventing major undercuts.

[ddoyle]

Acer, big thanks, in typical  cart before the horse fashion I'd made a huge study of etching processes but completely missed the part about seeing what others had done in previous centuries.
Seems etching was a very wide spread technique often employed by gunmakers. Is it not wonderful that the wheel cannot be re invented?

Early days of research but looking forward to learning more about these decorative methods. Again thanks for giving me the missing piece.

Be neat to see what might have happened on this side of the pond and to figure out what a guy did in 1545 to get himself a jar of acid!




Double-Barreled Wheellock Pistol of Emperor Charles V, ca. 1540–45
Made by Peter Peck (1500/10–1596)
German (Munich)
Steel, etched and gilded; wood, inlaid with engraved staghorn





Both the barrel and stock are etched with designs of Scottish thistles, along with an array of arms on the underside of the stock and the family crest of J. Aird etched on the wrist behind the rear sight, featuring a standing lion on a field of stars, set on a shield. Stock is fitted with a metal ramrod, a belt hook along the left side, ball trigger
[i

[Sawatis]

I've seen quite a few youtube posts lately from knife guys doing electro etching of logos, text, etc on high finish and pattern-welded blades...imagine they didn't learn to engrave.  Many print off what they want of on vinyl sticker material cut out on a Cri-cut (sp) printer...can get any font they want and actually quite fine detail form the pics.They typically show very shallow etching , just enough to make it show and then background stain with instant gun blue/black..My mother-in-law has one of these things so I'll have to try it out and report back at some later date. NO...I ain't gonna do it on an longrifle...but I do make a fair number of modern knives and tools...so they will be the Guinea pigs!   Oh most of these guys used vinegar as their acid...guess that was rather common and available in 1545 too!
John

[smart dog]

Hi,
You might think about making the sideplate like this:

http://americanlongrifles.org/forum/index.php?topic=4843.0

It is not expensive and you have the supplies to make thumb plates, inlays, etc.

dave

[Bear62]

I say keep going, have fun with it and if you get something out of it you feel you can use then use it by all means. Who cares how long it takes. You got some place you gotta be? If you are in a hurry then building guns is not the hobby for you!