CarolinaTraffic

All This Talk About Etching....

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All this talk about etching glass got me a little ancy.  So I decided to go grab an air eraser and give it a shot.  These are my first three efforts and I think they turned out all right given it was my first try.  I plan to make some Christmas presents for some family and friends so I wanted to get some practice under my belt in preparation.

 

The first try was a simple word down the side of a 22oz beer bottle.  The second was a little bigger on a 1 gallon cider bottle I use for making starters when brewing beer.  And the last was a transparent clip board.  On the clip board I mirrored the image and blasted it in reverse on the back side so the writing surface would remain smooth.

 

 

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Looks like you are off to a great start!

Cal

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Now that you've got that out of the way... Time to upgrade to a Paasche.
Not too long and you will have to have a cabinet!

I think I will most likely take both of yall's advice. Blasting with a respirator and face shield is less than ideal, so I think the blast cabinet is the next thing on the list. The Harbour Freight eraser worked surprisingly well though even though I was using my smaller compressor. I was just kinda excited to get started and didn't have an inline air regulator to tone down my big compressor that supplies my whole shop.

I did seem to go through a lot of AO though, I felt like I was filling up the little cup more often than should have been necessary. Also the crappy Greenstar vinyl I was using to mask with didn't wrap around the curved glass surface very well. I was still pleased with the results and didn't have any bleeding because of that but I would imagine that Oracal or a thinner more wrap friendly vinyl would have worked better

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I think I'm going to stop by harbor freight tomorrow.

 

This looks like fun. 

 

Can anyone give some part number to what you should get to start off.  

I have a huge 60gallon 2 stage compressor.  Just interested in a gun to play around with alittle.

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It is very easy.  The air erasure cost like 25 bucks.  I started that way and ended up getting the 99 dollar cabinet at harbor freight within days!

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So let me ask. How simple is this?

weed your design in reverse, apply as a mask on your glass and blast - it's that easy.    coarser grit gives you a nicer blast look but that is up to the person some like a finer grit for the frosted look,  too fine and it looks like acid etch (which imho doesn't look as nice and can be blotchy )   

to compare here is one done with a course grit

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I gotta try this...gotta pick up some cheap glass items now!

Ive got access to a sandblaster at work, but not sure what grit they have in it.

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I gotta try this...gotta pick up some cheap glass items now!

Ive got access to a sandblaster at work, but not sure what grit they have in it.

dollar General is your friend

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No Dollar General stores near me...all we have is Family Dollar and Dollar Tree stores...hopefully they will have some stuff.

So glass mugs and cups, and what other materials will it work on?

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I've seen etching on ceramic coffee mugs but would seal it afterwards as you would be etching the protective coating off to the porous material.  you can do metal, mirrors, etc

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You will love a Paasche a lot more capacity.

 

A piece of aluminum I did.

 

The last picture...

Use this to fill up you small cup, makes things go faster. (Harbor freight about three bucks)

 

 

 

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Nice job Traffic. You will be hooked now. That is how I started now have 3 different cabinets. Scott nice job on the mug.

Bob

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heck any dollar store has cheap glassware I think

 

I get a vast majority of my etching glass from Dollar Tree.  I also buy small bottles and jars from Michael's or Hobby Lobby when they put them on sale.

 

I bought a bunch of cheap bottles before Zombie Fest, etched them with things like "Zombie Blood", "Zombie Potion", etc. and then filled them with a mix of red dyed vinegar and green dyed salad oil (you can buy oil soluble dyes on ebay for candle/soap making) and then sealing the corks with a clear silicon adhesive and dipping the top end into black wax (more ebay dye) and sold all the ones I had made.  They sold faster than anything else I had for sale.

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For just practice, Goodwill usually has a nice selection of glass. Some of it would even be nice enough to resell after cleaning it up and etching.

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For practice I usually grab a glass jar out of the recycle bin, or a piece of scrap plexiglass. 

Cal

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To fill up my air eraser I just use a ketchup or mustard bottle that I bought from the dollar store. Sorry no pictures of the plastic bottles

Bob

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To fill up my air eraser I just use a ketchup or mustard bottle that I bought from the dollar store. Sorry no pictures of the plastic bottles

Bob

Yep.

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