Tankard etch project.

Hi

Back to work tomorrow so busy busy, its going to be an easy Christmas gift year for me as all of the male relatives are getting a personalises beer tankard so I thought I would put together a beginning to end glass etch using a couple of different application and weeding techniques. 

I know most people don't own a cutting machine and are free hand cutters as I used to be but these days with the Chinese imports the prices of cutting machines has hit rock bottom and used machines are regular items on Ebay from your top of the range Rolands down to some obscure Chinese model .

Once setup correctly these will perform the basic template cutting just the same as the most expensive ones, no need for contour cutting or laser optical detection just a basic standard cutter.

It may also be possible for the cost of a few personalised cups or glasses to have a word with your local sign making business for some of their off-cut that are thrown in the bin, I am sure they will be quite happy to reduce there rubbish output.

The first design I am going to make is a Sun Moon Stars for my brother in law who is a big time Astronomer (star gazer) this design is an easy and hard weed so I shall be doing 2 techniques with this one.

The next is a Newcastle United football club logo, this design is a lot more complex, but the thing is; that with a good vector design and cutting machine, complex means nothing as the machine does all of the work.

This is the vector of the design, I found this on one of my vector cd's bought from Ebay of which I have quite a few, a simple design as it only has 3 pulls, the outside suns rays, the full moon and the half moon which leaves the separator and stars untouched.
With this design I decided to put Derek's name around the design and make it the front.

To do this I first centred the image with crossed lines then using the circle tool pressed ctrl and created a circle, holding the control allows the circle to form from the centre out evenly.

Then using the path text tool, wavy line

Place your cursor on your circle and type, the text will follow the line and a bit of practise will be required to get it to go the correct way especially when you type on the bottom line to get it to go in the opposite direction.

Once happy that the text is SPELT correctly you can delete the circle then move each text set to a more desirable place.

This has lots of elements involved and a lot more fiddly.

The thin lines around the design will be pulled these will look good just plain etched or filled with colour 

I have drawn the boxes around the designs, this is normal practise as you would need to have an area around the pattern to mask, if not done now then it would have had to be hand cut once weeded.

I then sent the design to the cutter, for those that haven't seen one in action then a small clip I videoed, this is a noisy machine my other was an expensive machine with a virtually silent stepper motor and cutting rail, you gets whats you pays for.

Once all cut. I have separated and giving a light rub with a pastel to highlight the cut marks I then uses a soft cloth to remove the extra pastel and just leave what's in the cut lines, this is important as if you leave on extra it may get under a piece of the pattern and will stop it sticking.

Now using my tools, Dental pick, Scalpel, Tweezers, Close up reading glasses, plus strong light and bench mounted magnifying glass.

There are 2 ways of weeding your template, the first is probably the most used and is to weed on the workbench, this is ideal for larger elements that will stay on the backing paper but for very small pieces then it is easier to apply to the glass first. It is sometimes required that the two techniques are combined as with the Sun & Stars.

This is bench weeding, the 3 main elements I spoke off have been removed with the lettering left alone and it can now be covered with application tape, I tend to leave a border around my templates as you can see by the white of the backing paper, I find this easier for the removal of the tape once on the work.

For small jobs like this the template is applied to the tape first then cut around, don't throw the left over tape as this is used on smaller jobs or fit onto you template piecemeal.

All air bubbles are removed from the application tape by squeegeeing out and pressing at the same time.
A centre line can be drawn for more accurate application.

Your glass can be marked out, I use the squares on my cutting board to get an accurate front and back line.

The backing paper is then peeled using a very shallow angle to pull and watching all the time for elements of your design coming off with the backing, if this happens then stop and squeegee down again and try pulling from a different angle.

Once pulled then centre on your glass without touching, if you touch at the wrong time you may well lose your template as it wont be any good when pulled off again. Bend in the middle with the 2 outer ends higher then only the marked line part will be close to the glass, just touch the template to the glass and hold there.

Use your squeegee; one side at a time and gently allow the template to fall on the glass pushing any air bubbles at the same time. Once flat rub hard all over so as the glue is stronger on the glass than the glue on the application tape.

Again at a shallow angle remove the tape.

We don't want any air bubbles in our template, not such a problem for a light etch but for anything deeper then you could blow through, if the air bubbles can't be squeezed out then prick with a scalpel then cover hole with masking.

Next is to weed the letters on the glass.

Use a scalpel and tweezers to pickup and pull the small pieces.

Now for the back of the glass, not always easy to think of what to put on so a bit of imagination required.

For the stargazer in the family I made up a limerick.

I repeated the technique above, weeding letters this small are always a problem especially letter 'A' or most all with a separate inner.

For small pieces like this even when there are larger elements in the pattern it is best to leave them untouched until on the glass.

I made this glass yesterday with a leaping fish and the fins where left untouched until on the glass and it made it a whole lot easier to weed.
I used Rub n Buff ebony on this design.

Care should be taken in getting the pattern straight on the glass as the finished look reflects on not only your skill but also the care you put into your work and for the extra few seconds to mark correctly and line up its worth it. What I have done in the past is to have centre lines on the computer image so they are cut with the design for accurate marking, these will be masked before blasting. Forgot this time.

The Newcastle crest was a test piece to illustrate just how fine a line the machine can cut, I could have inverse etched this design by leaving the thin lines and pulling the larger pieces, doing it that way would require the whole box area being blasted to denote the outline. I will do this at some point to show the difference.

I pulled the very thin separation lines which takes a steady hand and a scalpel to get that fine point in to start the pull, take great care and watch every piece.

Because I was blasting only one side of the glass and no spray paint was involved then just the immediate area that may recieve overspray was masked.

I then gave a short blast with my new gun and I love it already, I have the pressure a lot lower at around 40psi and its working fine.

After the blast.

I am very pleased with the finish, just needs someone to want a Newcastle tankard, put on there name and of it goes.

Derek's came out just as good, I fully masked the glass as both side were to be etched.

and into the cabinet.
After blasting.

I have a black piece of vinyl in the glass to bring out the etch.
Very pleased with both tankards they have come out very nice, practise practise, practise.

Paul

Abrasive Etching versus Acid Etching

Hi

I have quite busy this time home and only a few days left before I go back to work I have bought some new additions to my blasting equipment and a use for the third solenoid on my air outlet manifold.

I had originally fitted a electric foot pedal to operate a trigger-less nozzle but thought it may break the solenoid valve with the constant on off so I have bought a air valve foot pedal instead.

Not a cheap option at £40 each but it it was required for the new blasting gun at £70

This is the 6mm Tungsten model, I don't know if it was the right move as this thing is huge and very un-weildy in the cabinet, it also requires quite a lot of air pressure to get a good flow. I have found my trigger gun ideal for glass but not so good for the ceramics but shall give this ago.

Another job I have just completed is the replacement cups I made with Labradoodle on.

Unfortunately it was not a Labradoodle but a Cockerpoo, not my fault but the guy who gave me the info.

I have since replaced these with new cups with a new design.

Can you guess what it says.

Back to the subject at hand.

I was around working at my sister this week who is also very crafty when her friend came round and in conversation mentioned that she had ordered a bottle of Armour Etch to try on glasses but didn't have a clue how to do it. I explained and showed her the blog on acid etching and about the youtube videos, luckily she owns a Silhouette cutting machine and is learning how to use it so she is mostly there.

I wanted to compare acid etch to blasting etch and as I had a glass I had scratched I thought a experiment was in order.

This is just a word on how careful you need to be while working on a job, I had fully blasted this glass and cleaned it, it wasn't till the next day I was packing it that I saw the very deep scratch.

You can see it under the h and above the o in fact you can't miss it, yet I did and can't figure out how such a deep scratch occurred, luckily I noticed it.

So this little test is to see the difference between the two.

*REMEMBER SAFETY --- GLOVES AND GLASSES*

I first heated the bottle of acid in a jug of hot water giving it regular shaking and keeping the water hot by replacing it until the contents felt hot.

Then the template was cut - weeded and stuck on the cleaned glass, I have taken to using optical glasses cleaner now as my sister gets it cheap at the cash and carry.

I then masked off the area as the acid being warm is a lot more fluid and may run where not wanted. 

Then a liberal coating of acid noting the time, this was going to be a 15 minute etch.

I gave it an initial scrubbing with the vibrating toothbrush to ensure all of the corners and edges where fully covered, then around half way through I gave it a second.

After the 15 minuets where up I scrapped off the acid and replaced it in the bottle for further use.

Then a good wash along with the application tools before peeling.

Well there was only one way to test and that was using a wife.

This was the acid.

and this was the blast.

And her verdict: 

Well it's pretty certain the blast came out on top, slightly deeper and more whiter than the acid still the acid isn't that bad and if you have nothing to compare against then it looks fine. It is obviously a lot smoother especially seeing as I am using a rough 120 now worn down to around 150 grit aluminium oxide.

Think I'll stick to my blasting.

Paul 

Vector Designs part 2 DOVER PUBLICATION

Hi

Not everyone who takes up an artistic pursuit is an artist, most will rely on pre-designed material, this is nothing to be ashamed off I am rubbish at drawing and painting myself but I do enjoy making artwork. In my many years I have taken up wood carving, furniture making and was once quite a good bowl turner.

This walnut root bowl was turned by me in 1988 plus a few hundred other's that are dispersed around the UK but I still can't draw anything other than a stickman.

I made stained glass panels for years but I mostly had a basic design element to follow.

This commission was for a farm house and I still had to trawl the Internet looking for a long horn sheep for the design.

What I am trying to say is that not everyone is an artist yet can still produce some excellent work using the design books that are available, but; a lot depends on the quality of the work available in these books and they run from excellent to very poor.

The most available design books on the market are from a publisher called Dover in fact they probably have 99% of the market and the prices can range significantly, I have recently amassed 16 Dover books to do this review but have never paid the full price as I have kept an eye on Ebay and bought ex library or just sell off's from online book shops stock clearances. I would have had a lot more but these went to Ebay years ago.

Dover supply 3 main types of books.

Dover Vector Motifs                      

Dover Electronic clipart       

Dover Pictura    (split into different categories)                   

To the credit of Dover they also supply a Design Management program on each disk that works with every Dover CD so no matter which disc you load the one viewer will show the designs. 

The images on the discs can come in many formats, JPG, EPS, SVG, PNG, TIF and on some discs Dover also supplies a copy of Inkscape to re-size and manipulate the images.

On viewing the image you like its then an easy task to import the design into your program directly from the disc as each one is numbered.

Which leads us onto the first book in my collection.

Dover Vector Motif Celtic - Amazon £19 plus p+p

This book is from the Vector Motifs series and unfortunately I only have the one, there are 10 in the series which are;-

You may notice the name Alan Weller, his name is predominant throughout the Dover design series as the main designer and I generally lookout for his work

Which comes down to the reason for me writing this blog, there is a lot of dross published by Dover with very poor quality designs and vectoring so hopefully I can direct any future etchers into buying the correct design book for them.

As I only have the one of the motif series I can only really comment on this work but to my mind this is the best of all of the design works, the above vector is from this book and each line is pretty perfect and ready to cut.

I have taken a random selection of 4 designs from the 309 vectors on the disk and each one is perfect.

I shall in the future restrict my buying to the Motif series as I believe they give the best value in quantity, quality, design and value for your buck.

Verdict 9/10

The next type you often find on Ebay are the Dover Electronic Clipart collection, I have 6 of these and I really don't know the size of the collection, must run into the hundreds.

My first is:-

Pre-Columbian Mexican Designs

This book contains 366 designs in TIF and JPG format.

Unfortunately they are all done as original pen drawn artwork which you would have to vectorise yourself, good for ideas but have seen a lot better,

Mehndi Designs

I love the Mehndi designs and those of you who have not come across these before; they are generally used as Henna tattoos, hence the designs on hands and feet,
I could do a lot with them again though all hand drawn although they do come as EPS, which is a laugh as when you open its just a drawing with no vector, looks like a JPG

Traditional Indian Designs

Only paid around £3 for this Indian book which came with no disc, well you take your chance at that price. Same as the above books just hand drawn images.

Egyptian Ornament

Well the Egyptian didn't disappoint, pretty much the same.
Only in JPG and mostly hand drawn images, although some as in the picture are drawing board quality and would vectorise nicely.

Celtic and Norse Designs

Getting a bit of a theme here and the Celtic Norse doesn't disappoint same old same old.
The cover leads you to think that these are all usable and if hand tracing then yes they would come out ok.

Asian Tattoo Flash

Are we in for the same, well not surprisingly yes, although these designs do have a vector format section but as double lines because of the line thickness at drawn, the vector converter picked them up as 2 instead of doing a single line trace. I suppose with a bit of work they will come out and if you do your own vectoring you could get some pretty decent images. I have a couple of flash tattoo discs from eBay with a few thousand images on them, to many to go through really but not to be disregarded as design elements.

Well these 6 Dover electronic clip art books aren't much use for the etcher but in Dover's defence these are clipart books and are designed for the image to be put on colour prints not as vectors to be sent to a cutting machine.

The premier league of the Dover catalogue is the PICTURA collection of which I have 9, these can be very expensive books some on eBay are up for £60 which are stupid prices and its doubtful they will ever be sold. I bought mine by snapping up the bargains as their came up and I think the most I paid was around £12.

There is no doubt that they are some great designs but do the vectors stand up to the high charges.

This is just a small selection of what's available and looking at there website it appears you can download individual designs.

Dover Pictura Floral Vector Designs - Amazon for £47.50p.
My first is FLORAL, there are 2 of these the other being FLORAL DESIGNS of which is an image archive.

As with all Pictura books the design and printing is of top quality using heavy 160 gram paper with the inside being very elaborate.

There are 200 vector designs inside of which maybe a couple of dozen or so are good for etching.

I have picked 4 random designs to check out the vectoring and the 3 basic ones being of excellent quality and the more complex requiring a bit of work to clean up.

The rose design is especially good and I shall remember that one and use it on one of the vases I have bought.

Verdict 7/10    All in all very good.

Dover Pictura Pre-Columbian Design. - Amazon for £37.99p

The same quality as the Floral with beautiful designs page after page.

Unfortunately it is more of a reference book for graphic artists and is basically a copy of the Electronic art just in a nicer wrapper.

The designs are all pen drawn with only 55 vectors out of the 204 JPG.

I picked out a few at random both borders and the more complex.

The borders, border on the basic whereas the complex are very complex, I know that there are a lot of South American designs out there, Inca and Peruvian as I used to have a collection and made this simple piece back in 2007.

Not the best for the etcher but good as a reference work.
VERDICT 5/10 Part of the image archive collection

Dover Christian Art and Imagery - Amazon £37.99. Guess the word Imagery in the title should have been a warning

Verdict 3/10  Beautiful pictures but I was hoping for a bit more in the christian cross designs, glad I only paid £8.

Dover Pictura Chinese Vector Designs - Amazon £47.50p

Now this is more like it beautiful designs and 208 of them, of course not all will be suitable but plenty for the Asian flavour.

The designs are laid out and numbered on the side of the page and again I choose a selection to check out the vectoring.

I especially love this Phoenix bird.

And the vector lines are very good, just the smallest of cleanups and its ready to cut.

Verdict 8/10 I like this one a lot well worth keeping an eye out for, I think I got this for around £12.

Dover Pictura Japanese Vector Designs - Amazon £47.50p
This is the first of the Japanese design books

There are some really nice designs here but I'm thinking the Chinese has the edge over it.

I had this disk open the other day looking for a nice design for one of my vases and I spent over 3 hours trying to clean up one vector.
202 designs to choose from

The vectoring is pretty rough in places, I was wanting to use the 4 egret design which looks great until you get up close to the vector.

I spent a lot of time in this design and will go back to it but I am still on the first bird after 3 hours and there are four of them.

Verdict 6/10 Not as good as the Chinese design wise and certainly not vector wise.

Dover Pictura Islamic Design - Amazon £37.99p

I really like Islamic designs, guess it must be geometricness of them (just made that word up) also no depiction of living creatures allowed so all intricate designs.

Unfortunately this is where this book lets itself down.

If you have intricate designs then the vectors also need to be of a sufficient quality to be able to use the designs with out spending hours and hours straightening lines and curves, I have spent hours on one design from this disc and still nowhere near finished.

 I have selected a few with different levels of complexity and had a close up of some of the lines.

Lines have touched and welded together, just bad allover.

Again on this circle design every line with need work to get to a quality output.

Verdict 5/10 What could have been fantastic designs have been ruined by sloppy vectoring on what is a very expensive collection of designs.

Dover Pictura Art Nouveau second series. - Amazon £37.99p

Again the small print needs to be read before selecting your book as with the Pre-Columbian it states image archive not vector design so a big and potentially expensive lesson learnt.
That's not to say it doesn't have vectors on the disc in fact of the 30 or so there are a half dozen very good ones.

But it really is a reference book on Art Nouveau designs

The designs are a little strange but I guess true to the period.

The vectors are very good just a little work on straightening and they will be usable, I like the boxers and the atlas style.

Not to sure how the lovers or the Spanish dancer would work but worth a try.

Verdict 7/10 What it has are pretty good, and the truth is I bought this book for the eagle design on the front and can't find it anywhere on the disc. Ha!

Dover Pictura Art Deco Design - Amazon £37.99p

I know!! Image archive, still it may only have a dozen or so usable designs but boy are they good.

This an ideal book for those studying art of that era as it has some wonderful work in it.

Not a lot to choose from but I have spent some time on the waiter design as I think it will look great.

There are also some great corners and the lady with the bottle is amazing.

The vectoring is quite good although the waiter requires a fair bit of work.

But the lady is pretty good.

Verdict 9/10 Not many but the quality is great.

Dover Pictura Celtic Vector Designs - Amazon £47.50p

This has got to be one of the best Celtic design books available and a must if you are into Celtic designs.

Some beautiful and complicated knot work and religious interpretations of the saints with plenty of roundels and corners.

The vectoring is of a good quality but a bit of work required on the larger pieces.

I have had this book for a few years now and have used it for a number of projects only one I have a photo of is when I was doing heavy stone work.

This is a 18th century roof tile from a barn, size was around 2 1/2ft by 1 ft and very heavy with all rough sides I have cropped the photo.
I bought it from a salvage yard as a practise piece and comes as natural sandstone, all rough and sandy. It took best part of a day using wet diamond polishing discs to bring it flat and glossy with the look of wood grain. The black splotchiness is natural and not spilt paint.

Anyone want to try something different with their etching then have a go at this, you do need a special grinder.

This grinder is variable speed and is water feed to cool and clear away the stone particles, try sandstone, granite or concrete pavers, very messy and wet but a totally different medium than glass or ceramics.

Love this book.
Verdict 9/10

In conclusion:
I have spent a lot of money on design books over the years and sold most of my good ones for pennies on eBay, the lessons I have learnt re-stocking to do this small review is that Dover has many different types of design books and it is important to check whether the one you are looking at is a vector design book and not a collection of artwork for school students to study.
So keep away from
Electronic clipart.
Image Archive (although some great designs hidden away)
Art and Imagery.
Concentrate on the Motif series and if you get a good bargain then the Pictura vector design series.

Paul