Electroforming is Art, Science and Alchemy all together. Electricity and Chemistry will encounter Geology, Botany, Sculpting, Metallurgy, Painting, Anatomy, Cryptozoology, Paleontology and more than you can think.
In this blog, I'll explain all the necessary steps to achieve the knowledge to practice this Beautiful Art.
Here we are finally with the recipe for the electroforming solution.
Few simple ingredients that can be easily found at your local stores or on the internet and few simple steps to prepare the most important component of electroforming.
Inside this liquid happen all the chemical and electrical reactions that lead us to our amazing objects.
Please be careful of how you handle these ingredients, some of them can be dangerous.
The first thing I'm gonna do is to dissolve the Copper Sulfate in the Distilled Water. To accelerate the process, I warm the water up a little. Then I pour the two ingredients in to a bigger container and mix them up once in a while until it is completely dissolved.
Once there are no more copper sulfate crystals on the bottle's bottom, I filter the liquid through a pile of four coffee filters with a funnel. Copper sulfate can contain impurities that need to be removed. The liquid must be clear to have a good result. This part is really slow, so take your time.
After that, I add 32 ml of Sulfuric Acid. Be careful with this ingredient because it's dangerous. Try not to spill it on your skin. If you do, wash the part immediately. Use gloves and eye protection.
Here we have a ready electroforming basic solution. With this mixture, we can start electroform our objects. But the copper coat is gonna be rough and opaque.
To solve this problem, we can polish them mechanically with rotary tools or tumblers.
In this case, I used Brightener. I added 10 ml of Midas Brightener.
With this substance, our electroformed objects will come out of the tank all shiny. There are lots of brands and kinds of substances that can be used to make our pieces shiny but I'm gonna talk about this topic another time.
The Solution is ready to be use so let's see how thing come out of the tank.
For Valentine's Day, there wasn't a better plant to use for a project than Smilax Aspera. It's a perennial, evergreen climber with thorns, and it's also a poisonous plant. It can be easily recognized by its heart shaped leaves.
Smilax was a nymph from Greek mythology. She was in love with the young Croco, but the gods opposed their love. Croco committed suicide and Smilax was transformed into a creeper. She still shows her love with these beautiful heart shaped leaves.
All the material and tools I've used for this project are:
With a super fine sharpie I marked the outline for the gemstones and I made the holes with a precision cutter.
Then I glued the hang ring and the stones around the holes with UV Resin.
I covered it entirely with conductive paint and hang it for at least an hour to let the paint activate.
When I dipped it in the electroforming bath, I noticed lots of little bubbles on top of the leaf. With a brush, I broke the surface tension to avoid bubble to form again.
After 20 hours… maybe more, our leaf is finally ready. I removed it from the tank and washed it with distilled water to clean all the electroforming solution residue.
I then prepared a low concentrated solution of liver of sulfur and dip the leaf in to it. To accelerate the process and to make a more attractive patina, I added a pinch of copper sulfate crystals.
To neutralize all these chemicals, I added a glass of bleach before it can be flushed down the sink.
Initially, the patina had this color.
But after 20 minutes it changed in to a wonderful blue.
Obviously, the first thing you do is to crack the nuts…. Yeah!!! We need to do it in a way that they get opened symmetrically. For the walnuts is relatively easy. For hazelnuts, we wanna ask for some luck.
After several attempts, I managed to open a few, more than I needed. I start to clean the inside of the shells with wood chisels to remove the soft parts. A little clean with a brass wire brush and to remove hard parts I used my rotary tool with a steel burrs bit.
With a piece of sand paper, I flatted the edges of hazelnuts shells, but this step is not necessary.
Once everything is nice and smooth, I painted the inside of my shells with a Mirror Effect Varnish. This step is necessary to give some luster to the crystal that we are going to mount inside.
Before we proceed to glue our crystals inside the shells, we need to do some adjustment. I had these Quartz Crystal points that I bought in stock, and they were too long to be insert inside. I needed to make them shorter. So I start to break some of the smaller ones I had with my flat nose pliers but, I wasn't able to do that with the bigger ones. I needed to change tool.
The best way to cut gemstones is with Diamond cutting wheel. With my rotary tool I cut a few of them and immediately realized that a lot of silica dust was flying everywhere. I could have used a respiratory mask, but the common practice is to use water.
In about an hour, I cut enough crystals for the entire set.
To glue them inside the nutshells, I used UV resin. Patiently, with tweezers, I manage to complete the whole set. I fit in all the crystals and cure them, one by one, under the UV Lamp.
The set is composed of a Pendant, a pair of earrings and a ring. The hardware for the pendant and earrings is premade. I only need to make a copper ring with some copper wire.
On my anvil, I flatten a bit the copper wire with a ball peen hammer and, with my DIY Texturing hammer, I made some movement on the surface of the ring.
I annealed it with my propane torch and, after quench it in water, I put it in pickling solution to remove all the fire scales.
With a steel mandrel for rings, I bent it in shape to the right measurement. With a rubber hammer, I hit it a little to make it harder. This process is not very important, since the electroformation will make the copper very strong.
It's time to glue the parts together.
Jump rings can be glued with UV resin on the pendant and earrings. UV light can't penetrate copper or nutshell, so I thought that the best solution for the ring, would be 401 CA Glue. It becomes super strong in less than 15 mins.
After that, the ring had gaps between the copper and the shell that needs to be filled. My favorite product to do this step is Relief paint. It's easy to use, and it doesn't take long to dry.
Next step is graphite paint. I use a solvent based graphite paint, so it needs to be shaken before any use.
With a brush, I paint meticulously all edges and the front of the shells, being careful not to exaggerate with the coat and cover the natural texture, especially for the walnut.
One hour or more to get the conductivity of the paint activated, and they are ready for a dive in the electroforming solution.
I set my power supply on 0.3 volts without doing any calculation of the surface of the pieces. I had 0.09 amps to start. The amperage will go up once the piece get coated with copper. It's impossible to make a calculation when it's only cover with graphite. For me, measuring inches square and multiply for amps it's a waste of time.
I dipped all the pieces and checked them after 2 hours. As you can see from the picture, the graphite is still visible.
In total, this process took 16 hours to be completed. With low voltage and slow process, you can get better and stronger objects.
After washing the residual copper sulfate with distilled water, I painted all the shiny copper parts with Liver of sulfur. It is a toxic chemical that smell like rotten eggs. Use it in a ventilated area or with a respirator mask.
Usually I dilute it in water and then submerge my pieces in it. This time I wanted to be accurate and paint the edges of the shell without damping crystals in this yellow toxic stuff.
In this way the oxidation occur faster, and after I submerge them in baking soda solution, the black oxide got peeled off of the surface. We will have 3 colors, orange, pink, and gray.
To remove the remaining black oxide and highlight these colors, I used, with my rotary tool, radial bristle brushes.
A 600 grit to get all the black off, and a 1000 grit one to bring up some gloss.
To keep all shiny, I used a transparent lack called “Zapon”. It's a holes filler and it prevents oxidation. Before any use, it must be diluted with nitro solvent to make it more liquid.
To apply it, I submerge all the pieces for a few seconds in it and then rotate to make a centrifugal effect to remove the excess zapon. It needs at least 2 days for a complete cure.
A pair of hooks for the earring and a chain with a lobster clasp for the pendant complete this project.
