Making an etching plate

Preparing And Etching A Copper Plate

This is one of the plates I'm working on at the moment. You may recognise the drawing from my earlier post of bird sketches. I decided I wanted to follow my drawing fairly closely so I photocopied it onto trace paper.

I then placed the plate of copper under the trace to figure out the position of the bird on the plate. This is needed for registration later on.

Recently I salvaged a lot of copper from the copper bin, nice big plates of it, already used but I can use the backs of them. BUT it takes a lot of cleaning! I bought an electric sander to get the worst of the marks off. Gradually using finer and finer grade sand paper. I then go onto wet and dry paper and sand by hand.
Finally, after much sanding, I use brasso and crocus powder to polish up the plate surface. The more polished the surface the whiter the background of your print. Any scratches will show up when you come to print so you have to be very careful.

I have to then degrease the plate in preparation for putting on the ground. I use a degreasing spray and whiting powder and work it into the plate with a rolled up old piece of felt blanket. You have degreased when water sits across the whole surface of the plate and doesn't creep in at the edges.

Now for the hot plate and the ground. Ground is a waxy substance you put on the plate which protects it from the acid. You draw into the ground and where you draw it exposes the copper so when you put it in the acid it eats only where you have made marks in the ground.

There are two sorts of ground, soft ground and hard ground. Soft ground is very sensitive, for example if you put your finger on a plate with soft ground it will leave your finger print, this will not happen with hard ground. Soft ground gives a soft etched line, it prints like a soft pencil mark whereas hard ground gives a very precise neat line, like a fine liner pen.

For this plate I have applied soft ground first. It helps me recreate my drawing as you will see, and gives a good variety of line in the final print.

Plate with applied soft ground

I now place the trace paper carefully on top of the plate and trace some of the lines.

I don't want to trace all the lines because the soft ground will just be a starter. The main lines will be done in hard ground.

Also I must mention that the back of the plate is protected with either stop out varnish or sticky back plastic so the acid doesn't eat into the back and exhaust itself.

I then place the plate into the acid bath. The acid is ferric chloride. Soft ground doesn't seem to take as long in the acid bath as hard ground, I left it in for 10 mins max.

Always keep an eye on the clock!

A bit of turps on the plate will take off the ground and I can see the soft ground lines etched into the plate.

I then want to apply my hard ground so the plate has to be degreased again and brought over to the hot plate.

Hard ground is much easier and nicer to apply than soft ground, it's also less stressful because it doesn't mark so easily!

Then, looking at my original drawing, I scratch the rest of the lines into the ground freehand with an etching needle.
Ready for the acid. This time I'll leave it in for longer, about 25 mins. The amount of time you leave a plate in the acid depends on a few things. How deep you want the etch, how old is the acid etc.

Again I use turps to clean off the ground to reveal the final etched plate.

Now the plate's edges need to be filed to a 45º angle. If you don't do this the square edges of the plate can cut into the paper and ruin your print. And finally I burnish the edges to give a really smooth finish and a clean edge to your print when you come to print.

In printmaking there are many ways to do things, this is just one example. It's like my mum always told me about cooking, there are many ways to come to the same result!

Soon I will show a step by step 'how to' about printing from the plate.