Saber Smithing - A Disappointing First Attempt at Acid Etching
My first foray into the custom smithing scene was, to put it mildly, an unmitigated disaster.
You follow those wonderful videos, and don't they look easy? And what comes out at the end is like those baking memes you see where somebody tried to follow the 30 second recipe for this or that and it ended up looking like a cow pat with sprinkles. I thought I'd done everything correctly, I printed the designs on to press n peel blue, I thermal taped it to my washed surface (flat) and bunged it in the oven at max temp for 20 minutes.
The result was about a fifth of the transfer sticking to the metal and the press n peel ruined on removal. But hey, there's still some toner on the metal, I'll try the etch anyway right? And for the most part that worked - though I think my concentration wasn't high enough, it barely ate any distance into the aluminium. However the toner'd metal was left shiny (ish, the piece wasn't exactly premium to begin with, and therein lies my first issue I think, more on this below) and the rest was eroded away.
Alright, that was a terrible attempt. So I figured I'd try to salvage my first failure with a cut of beautiful soft white leather for wrapping the hilt - when I say beautiful it doesn't do it justice, pearl white and unbelievably soft and comfortable. I was excited, a lovely white leather wrap over a polished brass hilt would look the business, even without etching right? Whence came my second error of the evening! 16", which I figured was ample for a wrap, was not long enough to wrap the hilt to a suitable look, a thicker cut could manage it, but it looked terrible, the correct look was about 10cm too short to finish the hilt. What a waste of beautiful leather! I immediately ordered a 24" offcut - I hope it's of the same quality, but we'll see.
At this point I'm disheartened. 2 failures in a row, my first attempts at customising have not gone well and frankly I was demoralised. But I thought no, try something else rather than just throw the towel in. So I got to work drawing up my circuit diagrams for the wiring. Resistor time... Can you guess what it is yet? Yeah. Ordered the wrong resistors didn't I. I should be thankful I caught it before I was actually on to soldering the board etc or I'd have broken something I think.
It's difficult though - for someone who's never done this before. I work in IT and I'm very handy with tech, but I haven't done soldering or wiring diagrams since shop in school (nigh on 17 years ago now). Plus it's confusing, the board manuals have these lovely diagrams for you to use but the values are all wrong on them - for example the Verso manual shows 2W resistors used with all the Cree LED's, that might be the case for a specific type of Cree set up, but in my case I have bought RGrB's - and it is not the case here. The G die actually doesn't require a resistor at all (due to the 3.7 volt battery and the forward voltage of the die being 3.7v anyway), the R die has a forward of 2.65v & requires a 1.2ohm 2W resistor (closest I could find was 1.2ohm 3W so that's what was ordered - W doesn't affect the resistance it's how much heat it can take), and the rB die forward was 3.4v & required 0.36ohm 1W. This is assuming all the LED's are being run at 1000mah which is the standard.
I highly recommend TCSS's LED calculator found here - saved me a headache anyway.
So those resistors have been ordered and will be with me shortly.
After this catalogue of errors in one evening I was pretty morose it has to be said, and that's okay, it's not an easy thing to learn. Point is - the videos make it look easy, they always do, these people have been customising sabers for years, often dozens or hundreds a year. Of course they make it look easy. As with anything new, learning is important. If I went back and did this exact same thing again I'd be disappointed with myself, because I hadn't learnt anything from last time, but if I improve even a small amount, the previous effort is no longer a wasted one. No time or even money is wasted if experience is gained from it.
After a good amount of reflection later in the evening - I realised there are several reasons why the metal etch didn't go to plan, using unfinished aluminium which had only been wiped with soapy water may not have been the best choice to start, I had no spirits on hand to properly clean the metal anyway and the surface was not a smooth polish at all, more of a very scratched up sheen. Secondly using an oven to bake the toner on with thermal tape holding it down was silly, it's a flat surface, tension is non-existent and the paper needs to be pressed tight against the metal. It's okay using a round saber hilt because tension wrapping is easy on a curve, but flat? Not happening.
So, lessons learnt are:
And that's my first day of learning to saber smith! I hope readers find this slightly helpful, I know I could've used some of this information beforehand.
I'll continue to blog this journey as suggested by a friend, so stop by if you think you can learn something from time to time.
You follow those wonderful videos, and don't they look easy? And what comes out at the end is like those baking memes you see where somebody tried to follow the 30 second recipe for this or that and it ended up looking like a cow pat with sprinkles. I thought I'd done everything correctly, I printed the designs on to press n peel blue, I thermal taped it to my washed surface (flat) and bunged it in the oven at max temp for 20 minutes.
The result was about a fifth of the transfer sticking to the metal and the press n peel ruined on removal. But hey, there's still some toner on the metal, I'll try the etch anyway right? And for the most part that worked - though I think my concentration wasn't high enough, it barely ate any distance into the aluminium. However the toner'd metal was left shiny (ish, the piece wasn't exactly premium to begin with, and therein lies my first issue I think, more on this below) and the rest was eroded away.
Alright, that was a terrible attempt. So I figured I'd try to salvage my first failure with a cut of beautiful soft white leather for wrapping the hilt - when I say beautiful it doesn't do it justice, pearl white and unbelievably soft and comfortable. I was excited, a lovely white leather wrap over a polished brass hilt would look the business, even without etching right? Whence came my second error of the evening! 16", which I figured was ample for a wrap, was not long enough to wrap the hilt to a suitable look, a thicker cut could manage it, but it looked terrible, the correct look was about 10cm too short to finish the hilt. What a waste of beautiful leather! I immediately ordered a 24" offcut - I hope it's of the same quality, but we'll see.
At this point I'm disheartened. 2 failures in a row, my first attempts at customising have not gone well and frankly I was demoralised. But I thought no, try something else rather than just throw the towel in. So I got to work drawing up my circuit diagrams for the wiring. Resistor time... Can you guess what it is yet? Yeah. Ordered the wrong resistors didn't I. I should be thankful I caught it before I was actually on to soldering the board etc or I'd have broken something I think.
It's difficult though - for someone who's never done this before. I work in IT and I'm very handy with tech, but I haven't done soldering or wiring diagrams since shop in school (nigh on 17 years ago now). Plus it's confusing, the board manuals have these lovely diagrams for you to use but the values are all wrong on them - for example the Verso manual shows 2W resistors used with all the Cree LED's, that might be the case for a specific type of Cree set up, but in my case I have bought RGrB's - and it is not the case here. The G die actually doesn't require a resistor at all (due to the 3.7 volt battery and the forward voltage of the die being 3.7v anyway), the R die has a forward of 2.65v & requires a 1.2ohm 2W resistor (closest I could find was 1.2ohm 3W so that's what was ordered - W doesn't affect the resistance it's how much heat it can take), and the rB die forward was 3.4v & required 0.36ohm 1W. This is assuming all the LED's are being run at 1000mah which is the standard.
I highly recommend TCSS's LED calculator found here - saved me a headache anyway.
So those resistors have been ordered and will be with me shortly.
After this catalogue of errors in one evening I was pretty morose it has to be said, and that's okay, it's not an easy thing to learn. Point is - the videos make it look easy, they always do, these people have been customising sabers for years, often dozens or hundreds a year. Of course they make it look easy. As with anything new, learning is important. If I went back and did this exact same thing again I'd be disappointed with myself, because I hadn't learnt anything from last time, but if I improve even a small amount, the previous effort is no longer a wasted one. No time or even money is wasted if experience is gained from it.
After a good amount of reflection later in the evening - I realised there are several reasons why the metal etch didn't go to plan, using unfinished aluminium which had only been wiped with soapy water may not have been the best choice to start, I had no spirits on hand to properly clean the metal anyway and the surface was not a smooth polish at all, more of a very scratched up sheen. Secondly using an oven to bake the toner on with thermal tape holding it down was silly, it's a flat surface, tension is non-existent and the paper needs to be pressed tight against the metal. It's okay using a round saber hilt because tension wrapping is easy on a curve, but flat? Not happening.
So, lessons learnt are:
- Use an iron to transfer toner to metal if it's a flat surface, it offers pressure AND heat.
- Concentrate the solution of acid more.
- Get spirits to clean the metal properly instead of relying on soapy water.
- Calculate resistors yourself - don't rely on the pretty diagrams in manuals.
- If you think you have enough leather you're wrong.
And that's my first day of learning to saber smith! I hope readers find this slightly helpful, I know I could've used some of this information beforehand.
I'll continue to blog this journey as suggested by a friend, so stop by if you think you can learn something from time to time.
Comments
Post a Comment