My recent post regarding aluminium etching gave details of my first reasonably successful exploration into this technique, so I’ve continued on and completed a new plate.

As part of a series of similar style images – the others so far being zinc plates – it was important the design was accurate and fit with the other smaller plates already completed. Details of these I will share in future blog posts.

Ball hard ground was rolled onto the cleaned and warmed plate surface. Made of a blend of wax and tar the product is applied to the warmed plate, melting the hard ground, before using a brayer to spread across the surface.

I’ve had mixed success with this as occasionally I’ve found even coverage difficult to achieve. It looks fine until held up to the light where sometimes ‘twinkling stars’ are shining through in places. This is where I haven’t applied it thickly enough and the metal is showing through. If left like this, some etching can occur in those places causing ‘noise’ or ‘interference’ across the design.

So although I had used the ball hard ground I added liquid hard ground over much of the plate before transferring my drawing. This sounds excessive but with 3 plates of the series already completed and one of them having the interference issue I felt it unwise to take a chance.

After transferring the design, and using an etching tool, I drew the line work through the ground before submerging the plate into the copper sulphate solution. The lines take a longer time to etch than the tonal areas and for this plate I allowed around 20 minutes for the first submersion.

Above is a murky photo of the plate in the blue solution. As it takes effect bubbles appear – which are just visible here – where the metal shows through, indicating the process is working. The plate was then removed and rinsed before checking the depth of etch with a jeweller’s loupe and inserting the etching tool into some of the lines.

The hard ground was removed and reapplied to the sections to remain without etching, i.e. where the white of the paper will show through. The plate was then placed back into the bath for a short period to achieve the first tone. In my previous post I’ve shown some progressive photos of my last plate, so won’t do that again here.

The plate was removed, etching checked and the lightest tones were then stopped out with ground before continuing the process several times: stopping out, placing in bath, rinsing, checking, stopping out more areas and repeating until a variety of tones had been achieved.

Once complete and the plate was cleaned and dried a proof print was taken.

Slightly overwiped, as can be quite usual with the first print pull, and there’s a scratch on the top right corner, which I think is from wiping when wearing my rings. Note to self to be a little more careful and remove rings when doing this! If I carefully burnish the scratched area I should be able to ether remove it completely or at least lessen it’s impact.

As ink was already mixed I also took a proof of an earlier zinc plate (Plate 2 in the series) with this one (Plate 4 in the series) overlying it.

Q: So why does it appear I’ve overwiped this second print?

The reason is simple. In this particular instance I’m trying to eliminate as much plate tone from the print as possible, so the image appears pristine against a clean background. This entails excessive wiping of all sections where there is no etching – essentially the flat surface of the aluminium plate. With such a detailed design of intersecting lines it’s almost impossible to do this without accidentally removing ink from some of the narrow lines and even the edges of a few tonal blocks.

Q: Is there a solution?

Perhaps increasing the viscosity of the ink (making it a little thicker) may enable more of it to remain in the etched lines when wiping the surface. However, this may make the removal of excess ink on the flat surface more difficult. There’s a balance to be found here.

Using oil-based inks allows an extended working time. I generally finish my plate wiping using tissue paper. By reducing the size of the tissue pieces I may be able to work in smaller areas and be more accurate in the process. This will increase the time it takes to prepare and pull a print but, of course, it’s worth a try. Using a soft cloth may also help.