Category: Blog

Some good news!  My copper etching experiment was a big success:

I created a bath out of corked PVC pipe that I bought at Building Resources today and kept the copper pipe in etching solution for two hours.  The etch is quite deep – deeper than I probably would want; two hours is too much.  A single coat of Montana Gold spray paint resisted the acid very well and came off very easily with Citrus Strip.  I plan on decorating all of the pipe I use for magnifying glass supports.

On that note, I once again stripped (har har) the copper pipes used for the Magritte piece and will try using car wax instead of varnish.  Supposedly it does a very good job while keeping the shine.  We’ll see. I’ve got a test application of wax drying now.

At Building Resources, I also purchased some more acrylic, both white and black, as well as some thick pieces of wood for the ShopBot CNC router, and some corrugated metal to make a Shanty Town sign with.  For those not in the know, “Shanty Town” is what we call the open space at the Art Explosion studios.  I spent some time installing various fonts and found a good sloppy one to make the sign with.  I touched it up a bit and now it’s ready to go.  I have the plasma cutter reserved on Thursday morning. Hopefully all will go well.  I’ll also be cutting the holders for the tank periscope and the gunsight, and hopefully will be able to etch them as well with the laser.

Another nice find was a side view mirror for my dinosaur piece.  I was lucky – thought I’d need to go to a car junk yard for that.

Today I stripped off some varnish from my Magritte pipes using Citrus Strip, and reapplied a different one after polishing them up.  Unfortunately, I discovered that the varnish is quite a good solvent for latex, and my gloves dissolved into the finish, so I’ll probably have to restrip and revarnish.  Grrrr.

I also cleaned and prepped some pipe for etching tests.  I used some Montana Gold black acrylic spray paint on some decoratively masked pipe.  I’ll try soaking it in some etching acid tomorrow. This paint is supposedly easy to burn off with a laser, so I hope it works well.

It’s been a few days since my last post and I’m afraid I have no pretty images to share nor completed pieces, but I have figured several things:

I found a nice spray gloss that I can put over leafing and metal to keep them shiny – much better than the stuff I tried the first time. I have several leafed pieces that need sealing as well as the Magritte piece. I’ve also found out about (and purchased) a good spray paint that works as an acid resist.  I am planning on using it for engraving purposes – I can remove paint from metal and have acid etch the exposed parts.

I’ve decided to use copper pipes/tubing to attach magnifying glasses to frames. I’m quite pleased to have resolved how to integrate the glasses with what they are focusing on. Copper is easy to work with, looks fairly elegant, and will be easy to attach to the frames. I can also do decorative work on the copper – vinyl masking/sandblasting and etching. Metals, especially copper, are featuring heavily in this series – they and the magnifying glasses provide a common visual thread.

In other news: I’ve learned how to use a rotary attachment for the laser cutter that will let me engrave on round objects. Aside from the obvious use on glass, I can try it on the pipes too. Only difficulty is that copper tubing that is easy to bend comes in coils, and unless I can straighten it almost perfectly, I won’t be able to spin it. Regular half inch copper pipe will work fine, but I’ll have to figure out that scary pipe bending machine at TechShop. On the bright side, my magnifying glasses fit nicely in half-inch pipe.

I also tried etching tiny fonts on glass and figured out the correct settings on the laser. A 4pt font is quite easy to read at 100 speed/30 power.

My plasma cutter parts and my router bit have arrived, so I’m now able to do some fancy CNC wood and metal working. I need to visit the lumber yard – Home Depot’s selection isn’t good enough. I also went to Blick and purchased some copper foil for embossing, some ferric chloride for etching, and some airplane glue in case I need a quick vacation.

Today I sanded down and restained a couple of frames, did some design work for some new frames (fingerprints and giraffes on their way!), and all but finished the “ceci n’est pas ceci n’est pas une pipe” piece.  I touched up the epoxy with some copper leafing pen to make it look all copper, and I spliced the top pipe and dropped a cross piece that has an elbow joined to an end cap.  I used transfer paper to print on a 4 point font.  To become clear the transfer paper needs an oil based varnish on top, and my pint sized jar of oil based varnish hardened up and died, so I used a drop of Damar varnish instead – it is oil based after all. It seems to work fine.

In the end, it’s a single continuous pipe, except for the magnifying glass.  I do like how the magnifying glass part looks like a question mark.

Tomorrow I’ll be at TechShop.  I have some woodworking to do and have some time reserved on a laser cutter.  I’ll also do a bit more design work on their swanky computers and prepare something for the ShopBot CNC router so I’ll be ready to go once my nice carbide routing bit arrives.

I’ve also decided what do do with the “What would you enlarge?” piece: I’m going to make the frame out of a ruler or yardstick that I will miter cut and wrap around in a rectangle.  I was thinking of laser etching it, but it’s more fun if it’s the real thing repurposed, especially because the piece would be measuring itself.

Aside from celebrating Rubyspam’s engagement, there was nothing too exciting yesterday, though I did order some plasma cutter consumable parts, which is interesting because until I joined TechShop, I didn’t know what a plasma cutter was.  I’ve also got a carbide router bit on the way for the ShopBot CNC wood router.

On the construction front, I drilled a hole in the pipe piece to mount the magnifying glass part.  I think in the end it looks fairly elegant.  Now I need to have a mount for what it’s focusing on.   My concern is it will look too busy no matter what I do.

Otherwise, I painted/stained and attached the backing cradles to pieces. One advantage of this blocking is that I can use it to attach the magnifying glass bracket so that the whole piece is a single object, as opposed to a having magnifying glass separately mounted.

On the one above, I tried outlining the letters in black, but it looked cheesy.

For the stained ones, I’ll need to sand them and reapply.  Where there were glue spots, the stain didn’t bind.  I needed to sand the edges anyway to make the sides uniform, so no no big deal.  That I’ll do at TechShop where they have a nice belt sander.

I also mastered a technique for making the blocks that doesn’t require corner clamps (The clamps I use, thanks to Scott, don’t work for small pieces).  What I do is apply glue to joint edges, press all 4 pieces together to form a rectangle.  Then, holding a corner tightly, I staple them on top. I repeat stapling all 4 corners.  Then I flip over and repeat. Once the glue dries, I remove the staples on top and glue on the top piece and clamp in it place or put something heavy on it.

Yesterday I bought a bunch of wood, mostly for framing purposes.  Also got some more gilding supplies for my wood-into-gold alchemy.

At the studio, I regilded the gas mask, both copper and cold.  I purposely kept the copper a little patchworky as I like the look.  Here’s the result for now – I’ll let it develop a slight patina over the next few days before sealing it.

Notice how the new filter on the bottom is all nice and clean compared to the old one.

Here’s another photo which I’m posting because of the cool way the lenses picked up the light:

As for the frames, I gilded the E’s using copper leaf and gold leafing pen.  The gold gets a bit lost, so I may switch to black, or maybe just outline it with black:

Also built 3 cradles, one for the E’s above, one for the Egyptian frame, and one for the speakers, shown below:

I’m thinking to use the wood on the cradle to attach a bracket to hold the magnifying glasses.

Last up, I used some plumber’s epoxy to seal the coil in place and cut it down to size. Below is roughly what it will look like.  I need to bore a hole into the end of a piece of end-cap pipe that I have to attach the glass in an elegant way.  That way it will all be one continuous pipe.  The glass is unfortunately not perfectly surrounded – you can see a tiny gap on top, but I don’t think it matters much.

Today I picked up a big piece of 18 gauge mild steel sheet from a steel yard in the city. (For the curious, “mild” means it’s low carbon, metallic, and not stainless.  It’s easy to weld, bend and etch but rusts like an old swingset, so it needs paint or powder coat. And for the really curious, 18 gauge means it’s 1/18th of an inch thick) I then then went to Building Resources (my happy place) because it was nearby and got a corrugated steel scrap and a 5 foot by 1 foot strip of what looks to be clear acrylic.  The mild steel is for the plasma cutter, the corrugated is to make a “Shanty Town” sign for the studio, and the plastic is for the laser cutter.  They’re all comingling in my car right now, and i’m hoping for some interesting offspring by morning.

On my way to the studio I stopped at Arch art supply which isn’t as good as Blick, but it’s close to the studio.  There I got some markers and Krylon Leafing Pens which aren’t cheap, but are absolutely fantastic.  While not quite as shiny as true leaf, they look exactly like antiqued leaf.  They’re much better than any metallic paint or marker I’ve ever tried.  The surface is uniform; there’s no powdery effect.

At the studio, I put another touchup gilding layer on the Ra piece, but was unsatisfied with the unevenness of it, so I applied a bit of the gilding pen and am quite happy with the result.  On a lark, I tried gilding a pastic-framed magnifying glass and the result is excellent:

Nice, huh?

I also received a replacement gasmask filter in the mail today and I worked on gilding it.  Result not great, but it’ll get there. I decided to touch up the copper mask as well and have some size ready to go tomorrow.  I may spend some time at Techshop too as I need to do some precise drilling and wood cutting.

Today I tried gilding the Ra piece. First I painted the engraved parts black with some acrylic paint, and squeegied off the excess. Then I brushed on the size (a.k.a. glue) trying to avoid the engraved parts.  Then applied leaf.  A fair amount stuck to the engraved areas since glue inevitably got in there.  I cleaned them up a bit using a knife and a finishing nail (fits just right) and reapplied the leaf to many areas.  I then cleaned up the engraved areas again resulting in what you see below.  I used a black Sharpie to touch up some gold spots in the black. I have another pass to do before I think it’ll be spiffy looking – or at least look quite a bit like what I saw at the Egypt exhibit at the De Young Museum sometime back.

This took several hours of tedious work, so my only other achievement was cutting a few pieces of glass down to size for some frames with my newly purchased class cutter.

Yesterday I spent 12 hours at TechShop in Menlo Park. I took a CNC Plasma cutter class which isn’t available in San Francisco.  The plasma cutter is fairly easy to use, though it does glitch a bit.  I’ll need to order some of the consumable parts to be able to use it.  I ordered a big piece of mild steel sheet last week and will be picking it up on Monday or Tuesday so I can give it a go.

In non-plasma news, I bent a metal ring using the manual roller.  I came close to lopping a few fingers off in the process, but no such luck. I will use the roller for the doll-chain bombsight support.

With the doll chain, I will TIG weld it closed and attach perpendicular supports to mount it on the wall.  In theory at least…

I also experimented with etching Mild Steel with Muriatic Acid (aka HCl).  Here’s the letter f etched for one hour. I masked it with a vinyl scrap.

It needs a much longer etch or more concentrated acid to make it deeper.  Now that I got it to work without hurting myself, I’ll try again with an image lasered into an enamel coated piece of metal as a resist layer.  It’ll give me an excuse to strip it off using Citrus Strip which smells almost as good as Fast Orange.  Women buy cosmetics by how they smell, and apparently I buy solvents with the same method.

Next up: Wedding Rings

Ok, I’m lying. They’re 4″ diameter and are meant to hold a magnifying glass.  The one on the right is decent.  I think it was beginner’s luck, as subsequent bends all flopped.  In the end, I discovered that the metal is so soft that I can bend it by hand, so I tried shaping it around a magnifying glass to get this:

I used a couple of spirals, like a tight spring, to wedge in the glass.  I think I may go with this version. I like how the pipe holds the glass without glue.  Just need to trim the edges nicely and attach it to a base pipe.

Below I’m experimenting with attachment methods.  You’ll notice some black tape around the copper pipe. I am planning on using it as a mask and sandblasting it for decoration.  The sandblaster was out of commission so I couldn’t try.

Continuing with the theme of “that’s not very interesting”, here are some experiments burning some copper leaf with the laser.  It works, but is verboten because the laser can reflect back up and destroy the machine.  I also tried covering it with a layer of acrylic first (not verboten). The ellipse on the left is the result.  I didn’t do this very long, since I’m not sure what the material underneath is, and there’s a possibility it could release cyanide gas if it’s not acrylic.

Moving along,  here are a couple of versions of the frame for the telescope piece cut in white acrylic.  For curious/forgetful, I have a telescope on one side of the room pointing at a frame on the opposite side.  The text will say “Somewhere a telescope is aimed at Earth”.

But wait, there’s more:

This is the frame for the “Please keep behind the line below” piece.  There is a line on the floor at a distance which makes reading the framed text next to impossible.

Next up is a frame for “Someone is checking out your ass” which will be mounted about 3 feet off the floor:

and last, and least, is a potential frame for a potential piece which will say “This is your least favorite piece”

I made the last two when my brain was fried, so don’t know if I’ll use them.  I’m questioning if some of these frames are a bit too cutesy/gimmicky.  Opinions?

Today I cut 4 frames at Techshop with pretty good results.  It was also the first time I tried using Acrylic both to etch and to cut.  Acrylic allows for more detailed work than wood, at the expensive of it looking like cheap plastic.  Etching acrylic is more precise, but it’s difficult to get much depth. Here are the pieces:

This one is wood – forgive the awful camera-phone photo. It was a pain the neck – two passes didn’t fully cut through everywhere, though they should have given my test pass.  I had to use a palm sander for a LONG time on the back side to thin the material down to the point where the cut went through on the front side (thanks to Terry at TechShop for the suggestion).  The text that will go in the frame, behind a magnifying glass, is “Does the voice in your head sound like this?”

Next up is the Ant/Sun God piece that I talked about yesterday, this time etched

I made nice-nice with an industrial belt sander to clean up the edges – for some reason the bottom edge didn’t cut properly, but the sander removed a centimeter of material in about 30 seconds.  Much easier than setting up the table saw.  The sander also cleans up the burned edges like a champ.

I’m thinking that I’d like to have this piece be gold with black eyes, but to do so I may need to make it again and put a layer of masking tape over it before etching.  I’ll try other things first.

Now for the acrylic:

Here I’ve cut the acrylic and etched to make it like the Rosetta stone.  I experimented with some graphite powder to make the etched text somewhat visible, while also giving a slight gray tint to the piece.  I may try other options – I saved the cut-out center piece for tests. Here is a prototype of what the finished piece will look like:

The text is meant to talk about the piece itself, and make you realize that everything around you will be a relic someday.

Last up is a cutout of the Mandelbrot Set.  Note how the detail is excellent in acrylic.  Now to make the piece – a self similar sculpture that incorporates it.