All This Talk About Etching....
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.
I too made the jump to etching. I was never quite happy with the cream. Here is my first attempt at a mug.
And here is my home made blast tub. Although I just realized after taking the photo I still need to add a hole for the air hose. When I made the mug I didn't have the gloves attached and so I ran the air hose in through the arm holes and just wrapped some towels around my arms to block up the holes. It did a really nice job of containing the dust so I'm hopeful my improvements will make it that much better.
I the lid had support cross moldings that I left for the added support but I might rethink that. They create shadows at just the wrong spot. I'm going to try different lighting options first but will likely remove the cross to get better lighting as well as visibility.
I used a HF air eraser with 120grit AO at 45PSI with a small 8 gallon 2HP air compressor, worked great.
