DIY Pint Glass Etching

Edit: Never mind found a 50% off promo code for Joann's:

kccf129

That's most excellent... I too was inspired by the carboy etching and have been wanting to do this for some time... Much more inspired now....

Another Option... When my wife (the homebrewer) and I (Lifting boy) got married many years ago we found a place that custom silk screened pint glasses for us for wedding favors. No candied almonds in silk baggies for us. We made the design and sent it to them and ordered a few cases. Everyone at the wedding got one. I think the cost was about $1.75 per glass. We still have several and we still here from folks that have and love them. So do a little of that google magic and you never know what you will find.

eyebinker said:

I wonder if you could use this etching cream to make a dot (or maybe a x) in the bottom of the glass. It would act like the etching in the Sam Adams perfect pint glass.

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This was my first thought. I don't see why it wouldn't work.

eyebinker said:

I wonder if you could use this etching cream to make a dot (or maybe a x) in the bottom of the glass. It would act like the etching in the Sam Adams perfect pint glass.

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I do not have supplies yet but I think this can be easy to do! If someone else is thinking about this and already have the supplies, (I am tapped on cash for a bit.....) I can offer up some advice as I have worked with the paste in the past but not on a project like this.
I would use some clear packing tape, a smoth clean glass surface (cutting board) and an Exacto knife, to cut what ever "pattern you want" then stick it in the bottom of the glass and make sure that no bubbles are at the edge(maybe a pencil eraser?)
Then apply the cream carefully to the open areas of the pattern. The etching cream should not eat through the plastic tape or its glue in the short time it is there. (I have used packing tape like/for this in the past.)
Note:Once the 10-15 min is up rinse with the coldest water as possible. The reason to use the cold is because it will aid in "deactivating the acids etching effect." Using hot caused it to "run under the tape".
Lastly rinse it out and then wash with cold water and then wash it again with hot and it should come out fine!

Warning: If it was me, and it probably will be soon, I would make extra sure that there was no "etching paste" left in the glass before drinking from it.

If no one else tries this before me, I will try in a few weeks. :rockin:

Just placed my order for the StencilPro material. I ordered a bunch of extra 4"x5" StencilPro HiRes sheets. I've done some silk screening in the past, and I may start offering a service to create the stencil with your brewery logo for a small fee. We'll see how it goes

I'm traveling for work right now but I'll give the mark on the bottom of the glass a try when I get home in a couple weeks.

I'll also post a picture of the first thirteen that have been done so far.

A quick note on the etched bottoms of glasses - they're laser etched which gives a much cleaner cut than any etching cream can. I wouldn't want to drink from any glass that had been etched inside with etching cream :S

On the stencil side of things, you can probably find some good info on the design process and cutting tips on my stencil graffiti tutorial I wrote a few years back when I was a stencil graffiti artist.

Stenciling: The Beginner's Bible - www.onelegout.com/stencil_tutorial.html

I'm all over this. If I didn't have to work today I'd be in the car on the way to the craft store. Nice Job!

Has anyone found the StencilPro locally or did you have to order it?

I've been workign on the stencil for this and I'm having a little trouble. I think what's happening is that the black on my transparencies isn't a true black so I'm having problems getting the stencil to the proper exposure level. If I let it go the full 25 seconds (or whatever it says in the instructions) the mesh doesn't fully wash away, and the ArmourEtch won't penetrate it. If I expose it for a shorter time, then it washes out the details in the stencil. I've tried three different things for the transparency. First was ink jet overhead transparency film. It didn't work at all. Then I got some label material at Office Despot. Despite being labeled as "transparent" it was opaque and caused me some problems. Finally, I went to Staples and got some stuff for window stickers. It prints pretty nice and it's clear. I'm using three layers to try to get the blacks truly opaque.

If anyone has figured out a really good way to get the exposure right, I'd appreciate it. I'm down to my last sheet of Stencil Pro and I don't want toorder another pack.

rv6tc,

Is the stencil and stencil pro material pressed together tightly?

What I did was I carried the stencil apparatus outside covered in a towel, removed the towel for 20 seconds, and then covered it back up. I then carried it inside and tossed it into a bowl of water for ten minutes. Then I held in water streaming from my faucet at a medium-low setting and gently rubbed the stencil where the design was between my finger and thumb to remove the material in the mesh.

Is this similar to what you've been trying?

Hey Huey,

That's exactly what I've been doing. I have two 5x5 plates of acrylic I bought and i sanwitch the stencil between.

I live in Denver... and I wonder if the UV is stronger up here than sea level. Today is very cloudy (Seattle-like!) and I think I may try doing an exposure with the clouds covering the sun.

Thanks,

Keith

Keith - when you say you're sandwiching the stencil/transparency between two pieces of acrylic, are you leaving the rear transparent? Only one side of the stencil should be exposed to light - even if you're using a piece of black velvet as Huey's using, that's still going to leak light to the rear of the stencil, causing the whole thing to set.

Wow, helluva nice write-up! I'm ready to try this! I have a friend working on my logo, once he's got it I'll be giving this a shot. The SWMBO has a big-o bottle of that etching stuff she used for some wine glasses. I'm thinking I might try the dot on the bottom of the glass thing today if I have time... anyway, thanks for this!

You do have a layer of solid black directly behind the stencil so it isn't getting light from behind?

I'm pretty close to sea level and UV radiation does increases about 5% with every 1000' of elevation gained.

I think the problem might be the acrylic:

http://www.rplastics.com/plexiglass-transmittance.html

Although it seems like it should work but it would maybe take a little longer.

Do you have a picture frame you can steal the glass from for the front plate? That might be worth trying. Did you get the StencilPro Hi-res sheets?

The only other difference with how I did it was I used a laser printer to print out my designs. By the sound of your problem it seems like you should decrease the exposure time just a little bit to prevent the material from setting up where you want it to wash away and maybe try rubbing just a little harder. It would also probably be worth adding another layer or two or three to make sure the logo is truly opaque. The less UV light it lets through the larger window you'll have for properly exposing the stencil while still being able to wash away the logo design.

Here's the troubleshooting page from Circuit Bridge:
http://www.cbridge.com/help/troubleshooting.shtml

It has some good info. One thing that jumps out at me is the 'Protect from intense light during washout.' I did this in my kitchen which is fairly light but I did cover up the bowl sometimes while it was soaking for ten minutes.

Above all I would try some small test pieces to get the exposure dialed in so you don't waste too much more of the material since it's pretty pricey.

Good luck.

ubermick said:

Keith - when you say you're sandwiching the stencil/transparency between two pieces of acrylic, are you leaving the rear transparent? Only one side of the stencil should be exposed to light - even if you're using a piece of black velvet as Huey's using, that's still going to leak light to the rear of the stencil, causing the whole thing to set.

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Good point. You really should stick some sort of solid material on the back so no light gets through to the backside which will set up the entire thing. The velvet is more to prevent light from reflecting off of the backplane.

This is probably the problem.

Wow. Thanks guys.

Yeah.... the back acrylic is still covered in the paper that protects it in manufacture, and I also put a piece of black cloth under the Stencil Pro. And yes, I'm using the Hi Res stuff.

A couple things I'm going to try today.... I'll use a glass/hard-backed frame this time... see if light was leaking. And I'll move the "developing" out of the kitchen. It may be too brite in there.

Thanks guys. Good tips, all. Maybe a combonation of all this will get 'er done. Hopefully, I'll be posting picture of the glasses soon!

rv6tc said:

Wow. Thanks guys.

Yeah.... the back acrylic is still covered in the paper that protects it in manufacture, and I also put a piece of black cloth under the Stencil Pro. And yes, I'm using the Hi Res stuff.

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That's definitely your problem then. If you hold that acrylic up to the light, I bet you can still see through it, even just a tiny bit. Added to the fact that black cloth has thousands of tiny holes in it from the weaving, it's letting enough light through to set the stencil material from both sides.

Definitely use a piece of wood or something equally opaque as your backing (as well as the cloth to absorb potentially reflected/dispersed light from the front), and I'll bet it solves your problem.

Thanks Ubermick.


I'll try it and let you guys know so hopefully we can save some of that expensive stencil on the next guy that does this....

Excellent stuff, Keith - bet they're gonna turn out rockin'. My Armor Etch just arrived (took over two weeks!) so I'm gonna get started on mine today or tomorrow. Just need to find something to use as a transparency, since my local Office Depot and Staples only sell them in packs of 100 for some ludicrous price, and I obviously only want one sheet. You'd think someplace sold them in packs of 10!

You could also try using regular paper. They say you can use 84 brightness 20lb paper (or less) and expose it for 3 minutes.

Exposure Times / Tips: http://www.cbridge.com/products/stencilproexposuretimes.shtml

Transparencies seems to be the recommended product and I had some available so that's what I used but it could be worth doing a trial run on a small piece with paper you have on hand.

Uber....

Too late for you, but I was able to find ArmourEtch locally at a Michaels Craft store. It was on the aisle with all the wedding stuff.

Maybe it will help the next guy.....


Keith

i just ordered a 22oz container of armor etch from overstock for 26.95 including shipping:

http://www.overstock.com/Crafts-Sew...d=123620&fp=F&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=11554855

thought id let you know in case someone was going to be ordered soon

diatonic said:

Looks like to get dishwasher safe you have to let the paint dry for 24 hours, then bake at 325F for 40 minutes. Seems easy enough

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If you paint the etching you should probably put the glasses in a cold oven and then turn the oven on, this will help reduce heat shock. Might even try a rest at 250 or something for a while before taking them to the final temp. Also, let them cool in the oven with the door closed so they don't get a cold shock too.

rv6tc said:

Wow. Thanks guys.

Yeah.... the back acrylic is still covered in the paper that protects it in manufacture, and I also put a piece of black cloth under the Stencil Pro. And yes, I'm using the Hi Res stuff.

A couple things I'm going to try today.... I'll use a glass/hard-backed frame this time... see if light was leaking. And I'll move the "developing" out of the kitchen. It may be too brite in there.

Thanks guys. Good tips, all. Maybe a combonation of all this will get 'er done. Hopefully, I'll be posting picture of the glasses soon!

Click to expand...

I suspect that your "sandwich" isn't really rigid enough to give you clean lines either, so even if you are getting good light blocking that could be part of the problem. Also, if you don't think that your "black" is black enough try a couple different paper settings in your printer driver. The driver should let you pick the type of paper you are using. If all of that fails you could try to print 2 transparencies and then line them up on the stencil material, it will be hard to align but should be plenty opaque.

Some of these designs have been very helpful to me for my Tiki bar Theme.
http://www.rubberstampplantation.com/store/stencils.htm

Lots of cool ideas.

I have to try this!

Awesome idea! Thanks for the instruction.

Well, I've had pretty crap luck with doing this.

First up, a lot depends on the logo/artwork you're using. If it's detailed at all, it's not going to work - at least that's been my experience. My logo here:

came out okay for the most part, but on four different stencils, following the instruction to the letter (I even have a darkroom with a red LED light to set it all up!) the hops underneath come out as an unidentifiable blob.

The real issue, though, comes from glasses. Most glasses don't have a nice flat (or even curved) surface to use. So you need to adjust your artwork to take into account the warping that a pint glass will produce. If you etch something, say, 3" wide onto a pint glass, it'll look like it's bulging downwards, since the stencil follows the tapering of the glass. I tried this on pilsener glasses too, since the Dollar Trees around here don't seem to carry the normal glasses anymore, and there's no way to get the stencil material onto the glass because of the curves.

Also, don't know if anyone else who's tried this has had the same problem, but the second time I tried to use the Armor etch, it was suddenly filled with little pebbles of dried cream, despite me KNOWING I replaced the cap immediately and tightly. It makes the etching process a lot messier, since those pebbles obviously don't work as well as the more liquid parts of the stuff you're applying.

All in all, I'm really disappointed with the way it turned out for me. I'm not saying it wouldn't work out for others - far from it, and the OP's glasses look awesome - but when I think about how much I've spent on trying to do this:

Glasses from Dollar Tree: $36 (12 standard pint, 24 pilsener style, since they stopped carrying the regular pub glasses)
Armor Etch cream: $16 shipped
Stencil Pro: $32 or so
Transparency sheets: $12

For not much more I could have gotten three dozen professionally done glasses from bargainmugs.com and they'd look a LOT better than the messes I made!

Wow, I think I know why we haven't seen a bunch of other etched glass pictures. Only do this if you want a DIY and not to save money. Your product won't be quite as good as you can buy at a bargain glassware site, and it will be very close to the same price. After reading about the issues with making the stencil, I bought a 4" X 5" one for $20. Then I bought the kit for $20 and it included the 30 second etching cream and the adhesive as well as some silver paint to highlight the etched glass. I ruined about 6-7 glasses getting the technique down and eventually ended up with glasses like this. My advice is to avoid thin lines, they blur and skip. Use the adhesive, it let's you know when the stencil has a slight bubble and keeps the stencil tight to the glass. Don't use the paint, it looks weird and doesn't apply evenly.

One thing I'd like to bring to the table here, I custom engrave glassware for people and sell it at conventions and the like. I've tried the armour-etch and other etching creams and I'm not that happy with the long term results. When you acid-etch glasses the etched area tends to wear down after a year or so of use and washing. Some people don't notice it, or think that it's not a big deal after that much time, but I disagreed so I set out to find what else I could do. After some experimentation I've finally settled on using a Dremel tool with diamond tip and it turns out great. You can get really detailed work and it lasts a lot longer. It does, however, take more time. I usually spend 10-25 minutes on a single glass depending on the amount of detail. Basic images (like the Hyrule crest from Zelda) takes like 10 minutes at most, while really detailed images (like the Alliance symbol from WoW) take around 20-25. And yeah, I'm a bit of a geek.

I'm anxious to try this. I've had the materials for a while, but just been really busy. I should get my first attempt in this week. I plan to etch some glasses and bottles, and I'm going to try to find some white paint for silkscreening bottles. Should be fun, and I'll post my results.

Eden192 said:

One thing I'd like to bring to the table here, I custom engrave glassware for people and sell it at conventions and the like. I've tried the armour-etch and other etching creams and I'm not that happy with the long term results. When you acid-etch glasses the etched area tends to wear down after a year or so of use and washing. Some people don't notice it, or think that it's not a big deal after that much time, but I disagreed so I set out to find what else I could do. After some experimentation I've finally settled on using a Dremel tool with diamond tip and it turns out great. You can get really detailed work and it lasts a lot longer. It does, however, take more time. I usually spend 10-25 minutes on a single glass depending on the amount of detail. Basic images (like the Hyrule crest from Zelda) takes like 10 minutes at most, while really detailed images (like the Alliance symbol from WoW) take around 20-25. And yeah, I'm a bit of a geek.

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Can i get some more information on this, I'd be interested to hear about it. Do you have any pictures or a more detailed account of how you do it?

I'd be interested to hear more about the dremel approach?

FYI, if you have a Staples near you, and don't want to buy a pack of 100 transparencies for $30, just take a copy of the image to their copy center, they will copy it onto a transparency for a little under $1 apiece.

Also, I used the ArmourEtch, and they recommended a 5 minute application; this was not long enough IMO. the image was light.

I totally agree with this. I'm running close to an hour, but I think it quits being effective after about half hour.

I really wish I would have thought about just having Staples make the transparency for me. I guess it's time to buy another pack of the stencil materials.

eggraid101 said:

Also, I used the ArmourEtch, and they recommended a 5 minute application; this was not long enough IMO. the image was light.

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eggraid101 said:

FYI, if you have a Staples near you, and don't want to buy a pack of 100 transparencies for $30, just take a copy of the image to their copy center, they will copy it onto a transparency for a little under $1 apiece.

Also, I used the ArmourEtch, and they recommended a 5 minute application; this was not long enough IMO. the image was light.

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We finished xmas shopping pretty early this year, so etching glasses is my weekend project this weekend. Yesterday I was at Staples and they made me b+w transparencies for a buck a pop, like you said, but I didn't have to buy a pack of sheets first. I just gave him my thumb drive and he printed out b+w on paper until I liked the size, and then 3 small and 3 medium on transparencies. Paid him 6$+tax, it was great.

Reviving an old one!

1. Has anyone tried etching the bottom of the glass with Armour Etch to create the nucleation site?

2. Also, is there a way to dye the etched portion of the glass? I was wondering if this could be done by mixing dye into the Armour Etch or actually applying the dye after the etching to the same stencil.

Also, has anyone figured out an optimum amount of time to leave the paste on the glass?

If anyone has done either of these, it would be great to hear about it. I'm about to start my glass etching this week. Thanks!

Has anyone tried using the PNP Blue Transfer paper used to etch circuit boards?

I saw it being used on a mirror on this craft site.
http://www.etsy.com/blog/en/2009/how-tuesday-glass-photo-etching/

It looks like you can get pretty detailed. The tough part seems to be getting it onto a curved surface like a pint glass. I have some of the paper so I will try it out with some armour etch. I was just wondering if anyone had tried this yet.