Photo etching

After a somewhat mixed result in the first week, this time most people actually managed to get something achieved that they were happy with or at least that they understood some of the limitations and problems with this method.
The first week was fraught with problems with the process and the materials. There are clearly different sorts of photo etching film that need to be treated in different ways. The sort we have for use at college needs to be applied by wetting the surface of the metal slightly to allow the film to adhere once applied- then rollering the film and finally heating with a hairdryer to ensure good adhesion before finally placing with the acetate image in the light box.

The process of photo etching has many steps and each one has its problems and issues.

1) ensuring the image you want is in the right format - in black/white.
On the acetate - the images in black will be unexposed and will therefore wash off in the soda crystals leaving the bare metal exposed.
White/clear areas will be exposed- the film will harden and not be washed away protecting the metal and therefore will remain unetched.
Black on the acetate - etched away
White on the acetate - metal protected.

2) the metal needs to be clean flat and the right size.
Cutting accurately is a skill that takes much time to practice!
Flattening it without damaging it also appears to be harder than you would think!

3) Getting the film cleanly onto the metal for the photo etching process is challenging.

4) lining up and exposing the image is prob the easiest element of this whole process. However, removing the top layer of film afterwards is really tricky! I think you need to trim the film as close to the edge of the metal as you possibly can- where there were large areas of excess it seemed more likely that areas of the film would pull away from the metal when the top protective layer was removed.

5) the cleaning away the unexposed area with soda crystals is not too tricky but as always health and safety can cause problems and this is definitely a job where you really need more space and less people trying to do the same thing at once.

6) getting the piece ready for the acid- covering the back and the edges can be difficult to achieve a clean strong finish.
If you have the metal protected all round the edge anyway then sealing off any Areas where the film has come away is not too tricky. However, if you have unprotected metal close to the edge then getting a clear line of protection on the edges themselves is not as easy- the stop out varnish is very thick and difficult to use accurately- it would be interesting to look for others things to use to do this aspect more easily.

7) The etching part in the acid is quite a quick process- you can see the metal coming away very quickly and the problem here is ensuring that you get the level of etching you require. Again this is made more challenging by having a lot of people all wanting to use a fairly small tray at the same time- health and safety wise as well - there were issues with people not being as aware as they could be of others and also misunderstanding what needed to be done- for instance adding warm water to the acid itself rather than to the water bath around it.

8) the caustic soda step is definitely the one where most care needs to be taken,
Only one person should be in charge of mixing up the solution so that the strength is carefully regulated. If it is too strong then even with safety equipment it is possible for people to get hurt- gloves were not sufficient protection for hands as they actually disintegrated in the strength of the solution causing nasty burns to the fingers.

It is possible to clean up the metal in other ways- for example leaving it to soak in a much less vicious solution and then rubbing it off once it has softened slightly with steel wool.

The end results can be quite beautiful and if it works well then it is definitely a technique I would want to use again but perhaps in a situation where it was slightly less fraught or I had more control over the different variables.

Daring Greatly

I read a post recently about the myriad of New Years resolutions being listed- all full of positive aspirations for what we hope to achieve in this new year. For most of us though, those resolutions quietly slip to one side amidst the day to day clutter of 'normal' life. What they had resolved to do was essentially not to worry so much about perfection or failing- but to accept that to succeed we have to also fail and to use those failures to keep moving forwards.
They used this quote as their inspiration

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”

–Theodore Roosevelt

This is exactly how I want to go forwards this year- DARING GREATLY- and all the times I want to give up or I'm too afraid to try I am going to see this written large above my workspace and hope that I will have the courage to do so!