Liver of Sulphur, Black Shoe Polish, Rustoleum Flat Black

[mdengraver]

I know a lot of the engravers use the Black Shoe Polish or Rustoleum Flat Black to bring up their cuts on the pieces for negative space, etc, and to observe how their pieces are coming up on the metal. Many of the engravers use steel. But for engravers that use copper, brass, sulphur for jewelry, etc we often use Liver of Sulphur or other metal reactants. Do any of you use reactants on your pieces, especially on the harder metals such as steel, and what are they?

 

[GTJC460]

I use two products on non-ferrous jewelry items to darken them. One is called blackmax from rio grande. The other is called Jax silver darkener.

I don't know what's in black max, but theres something nasty in it. I spilled a little bit in my bench drawer and it started eating through the metal drawer liner. I'd definitely say make sure you know what not to apply it to.

 

[monk]

birchwood-casey can give some interesting effects to copper. color the copper, engrave your design thru it, can really look good. shown here is a copper coffin plate i did several months ago. the people wanted this to look old like they were done decades ago. i dabbled birchwood-casey on the copper till i thought it was old looking. the people were very pleased the way this turned out.

 

[mdengraver]

Nice idea Monk. Thanks for sharing.

 

[monk]

there's a possible market for hand engraved coffin plates. depends on the local mind-set. shake a few trees in your area- you may get some of this to do. i do memorial plates for local funeral parlors, but as a cost-saving, measure, i do them with my laser. the facilities normally don't want to spend the xtra cash for hand engraving.

 

[Mike Frakes]

Monk,

Are you telling us that funeral parlors think hand engraving is a dying art?......lol

Mike

 

[monk]

no, not at all. in the first place most young funeral directors never heard of "coffin plates". the trick is to convince them to show that what you do is available to their clients. i do a lasered plate for each client. they also know such is available engraved by hand. they just don't want to spend xtra bucks. go to my dropbox, you'll see some beautifully engraved coffin plates. jayismonk450@gmail.com