So, I've been hacking lumps of metal around...

Warning, wall of text approaching. Scroll down for pretty pictures if you're impatient.

I work in a school, so I get this dirty great lump of holiday from late July to the end of August.

I tend to pick something I feel like giving a try during this holiday, rather than just playing CoH. I've knitted chainmail, modded Xboxes, whatever catches my fancy.

This year, I decided to give brass etching a shot. Why? Not a clue. It just looked interesting enough to keep me entertained. Well, that and I wanted to make a late wedding present for a friend who got married in Las Vegas, of all places... (the present will not appear in this post)

While I was doing research and thinking on designs, I decided to try some smaller pieces than the oversized lump of brass that was being made as a present (a desk nameplate, the recipient's a doctor}

Bear with me, this does eventually have some relation to CoH.

So, I decided to make a couple of keyrings.

This led to trying to figure out designs. Which led to CoH AT symbols. Which leads to a headache. To do etching on brass the way I did it requires a monochrome Black/White design.

I eventually got my sweaty little mitts on some AT symbols, by drawing them in Inkscape. And yes, it took a while. I started with Scrapper, Defender and Stalker, as they were pretty straightforward.

While I was on, I drew up a Crane and Lion Clan Mon from L5R, the Crane mon initially as part of the aforementioned present, since the recipient is a Crane fan, and the Lion mon because I could use the same paint I was planning on using on the Scrapper keyring. And for good measure because I'm a manga nut, I drew up the glyph from Kurosaki Ichigo's Temporary Soul Reaper badge in Bleach. (don't worry if that sentence made no sense, just let it wash over you)

Once I had the designs, I just had to transfer them to the brass to use as a mask. This process hurts your brain. You have to remember that black on the design will be left as raised brass, and White will eventually be etched into the metal and filled with whatever colour paint you use. You also need to mirror the designs horizontally.

The horizontal mirror is because to get the designs onto the brass as a mask, you print them out then iron them onto the metal. (look up etching brass on Instructables for more details)

OK, this is getting long enough as it is. In fact I just chopped out about another 15 paragraphs of 'how to do it'. If you want to know more, then look it up. Instructables and Google should tell you anything you need to know.

This is NOT a quick process, merely filing the keyrings to shape took me an hour for EACH keyring. The paint needs to dry at least overnight, if not longer. The Lacquer again needs to dry fully etc. etc.

So the keyrings got filed to shape, painted, lapped, drilled, clearcoated and I fitted some soldered copper split rings. (that one sentence took about a week and a half to actually do...)

Oh, and please bear in mind that the keyrings may look bloody huge in the pics, but they're about 27mm across in reality. Also, almost all work was done with hand tools - Hacksaw, 8" second cut metal file, Needle files, Wet/Dry paper. A drill press was used to pierce the holes.

The pitting due to the problems with the mask is most noticeable on the Defender, Scrapper and Stalker closeups, but I quite like the effect on the Bleach Glyphs. I'm REALLY pleased with how the Crane and Lion Mons came out though, especially since I basically had to hand draw the mask for those due to difficulties getting the design to transfer properly.

Time for the pretty pictures! (but apologies for relatively crappy photography)

All 8 Keyrings:



Scrapper:



Defender:



Stalker:



Crane mon:



Lion mon:



Bleach Glyph:

I like.


You know what you should do, though? Make Pokemon badges. That'd be the ****.

Man that's awesome.
I did some metal etching (using stuff to scratch a design into the surface of metals) for art class way
back in high school and also the reverse, Silverpoint or Brasspoint (using metal to scratch a design into
other stuff) too and I recall it was very time consuming but totally worth it.

Very cool results you have there... are you planning to give em out as prizes or sell them? Or do you have
8 cars and happen to need a keyring for each?

One --> Artz Giveaway <-- To Rule Them ALL!

I will settle this. ORANGE FTW! - Ex Libris

That looks a lot more time consuming than glass etching, that's for sure! But nice results, especially for the first time doing it, hope you find it fun for a while

standard glass etching disclaimer: glass + air travel = BAD, no, no glass etched anything at HeroCon

Yeah, I like 'em!

It is mostly that process for thin glass, yeah, thicker glass you get into sand etching (whoo messy...), last that I was messing with it I was working with reverse pattern etching with mirrors, which is way more complicated than I thought it would be :7

Awesome, love the crane one.