Testing out etching

So i bit the bullet and tried out etching with Ferric Chloride.  It works, but is a little bit on the sloppy side.  Very much "space junk" kind of look.

Here is what the mask looked like.  I think I could have spent longer, it took me about 10 minutes of rotating it under the iron. My goal was to try and get the ink to show through the paper while I was ironing it.

Here is what the etch came out like after alternating dunking in Ferric Chloride and water for 20 minutes.

I scrubbed it after it had been through its last rinse, but it still retained some sort of rust look to it.  I can't seem to scrub it off, i'll have to see if it'll be an issue if I try and spray paint over it.  However it does look like the mask didn't entirely protect what it was supposed to.  Its all good, since I was going for a really beat up type of look.  I have to drill through the holes first and then test out spray painting it.

After cleaning off more of the gunk with a green scrubby pad and nail polish remover it looks a a lot nicer

After this I hit it with a base of flat black and then topped it off proceeded to wet sand the raised parts.  It appears that the Ferric Chloride didn't come out as clean of a process as I had hoped, but I like the aesthetic that it has going on.  Using a reverse etch to invert the color of the text like on the tone stacks doesn't seem to work that well either.  I think i'll just go with raising the text. As you can see the large Aluminum exposed areas have major holes in them...

I was debating whether or not to coat it with anything, I got some great advice to clear coat it with stuff from the automotive department from Cody (CHECK OUT HIS AWESOME BLOG!), and another Madbeaner DMinner (MAKES SOME REALLY GREAT ETCHES) said it might be fine with out it.  After holding the pedal for a little bit, it became clear that it was still rubbing blackness off onto my hands.  So i used some of the Krylon Gloss Clear coat that I had around and laid it on there.  In person the light hits the metallic flakes in the paint and it looks great!

And the guts

And testing out another one for a friend...

This one was at first red, but too bright so i tried spraying some black at a distant over it all and it came out to be a pretty awesome darkened red color.

Update 08APR2016

If you have to use Kinkos to print (as I did) then here is the paper you should ask for them to print on.

"Gloss White"