TheDarkPope
Well-Known Member
I thought of doing separate threads for obvious reasons, but I didn’t want to type that much. Over the last few weeks I’ve wanted to make some Hellraiser and Stargate coins. Since I’m an etcher of metal, I decided to etch the coins instead of stamping them. First – it’s cheaper to etch than to have a die made. And second – well I guess there is no second.
I actually had a rather difficult time trying to figure out how to do this correctly. The technique is very different from standard sheet metal etching. The coins have a lip and that’s what caused so many issues. When they were placed in a “normal” stencil, the lip caused the light to diffuse across the piece and made for a bad piece. I knew it wasn’t correct, but at this time, I didn’t know if I was ever going to get a correct piece done. Here’s what it looked like.
This was actually the 6th attempt at doing this. The 7th was more of a disaster, then I had an epiphany. I figured out how to get the image onto the piece correctly and here’s the 8th attempt.
There’s a little bit of the corner that didn’t make the full etching process. The pictures are inverted (which is a clue as to how I figured this out), but I was able to do a reasonable etch.
Since I had figured out how to do this (or so I thought), I got started on some Stargate coins. I prepped a batch of 3 only to find out that I did those wrong and had to once again figure out what went wrong and at what stage in the process. Stripped the film off those and started again. Then as if the might tentacle of Cthulu touched me, I figured out (again) what I did wrong. I went on to prepare these 8 coins for etching.
While 8 were made, after closer inspection, the Apophis coin had to be stripped and will be redone later. The remaining 7 were etched, and the remaining film stripped off. They came out a little green.
After a small soak in some fresh etchant, and a bit of a wire wheel, they all cleaned up rather nicely.
Aside from Apophis, I have a few other Stargate designs in mind. I have been toying with painting them, and the one I did paint, didn’t turn out well. That’s likely because I wasn’t enough of a geek in my childhood and left the Warhammer 40K miniature painting to my friends while I played Wizardry on my Apple IIe. That’s a whole different story
Let me know what you think. I’m open to ideas on painting, or coin designs.
I actually had a rather difficult time trying to figure out how to do this correctly. The technique is very different from standard sheet metal etching. The coins have a lip and that’s what caused so many issues. When they were placed in a “normal” stencil, the lip caused the light to diffuse across the piece and made for a bad piece. I knew it wasn’t correct, but at this time, I didn’t know if I was ever going to get a correct piece done. Here’s what it looked like.
This was actually the 6th attempt at doing this. The 7th was more of a disaster, then I had an epiphany. I figured out how to get the image onto the piece correctly and here’s the 8th attempt.
There’s a little bit of the corner that didn’t make the full etching process. The pictures are inverted (which is a clue as to how I figured this out), but I was able to do a reasonable etch.
Since I had figured out how to do this (or so I thought), I got started on some Stargate coins. I prepped a batch of 3 only to find out that I did those wrong and had to once again figure out what went wrong and at what stage in the process. Stripped the film off those and started again. Then as if the might tentacle of Cthulu touched me, I figured out (again) what I did wrong. I went on to prepare these 8 coins for etching.
While 8 were made, after closer inspection, the Apophis coin had to be stripped and will be redone later. The remaining 7 were etched, and the remaining film stripped off. They came out a little green.
After a small soak in some fresh etchant, and a bit of a wire wheel, they all cleaned up rather nicely.
Aside from Apophis, I have a few other Stargate designs in mind. I have been toying with painting them, and the one I did paint, didn’t turn out well. That’s likely because I wasn’t enough of a geek in my childhood and left the Warhammer 40K miniature painting to my friends while I played Wizardry on my Apple IIe. That’s a whole different story
Let me know what you think. I’m open to ideas on painting, or coin designs.
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