What a nuisance! I don’t recall having so much trouble with Press n Peel Blue etching resist when I did the trucks for my locomotive. Of course, reading back over those posts, I see that I used up five sheets of the stuff before I got one I was happy with. So, perhaps the memory is clouded with time.

As before, I checked in on Ron Hilsden’s page, and more or less followed his excellent instructions, minus the rock tumbler and the microwave. The key that I had forgotten was to sand the brass so it has a little tooth for the toner to stick to. Hopefully I’ll remember that next time. Other things to remember:

• Make sure the printer cools down between pages, otherwise the PnP wraps around and jams inside.
• Aim for smaller etchings. My printer (an HP 1200) varies by as much as .030″ over the length of a page. Best, then to have the two sides near to each other.
• Use Ron’s tip of the .020″ dots to help line up the two sides
• Sand the brass before printing to give a little tooth for the toner to bind to – bears repeating!
• Let it cool completely before peeling off the backing

From left to right on the fret here, there are the end doors, the trucks (19 folds for each frame), the side windows, the cupola windows, and the steps. I toyed with the idea of etching the cupola itself, but decided it was easy enough to make from scratch.