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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;moreotherstuff, post: 1246765, member: 56&quot;]Etching involves placing a plate in an acid bath.&nbsp; (The acid is called a &quot;mordant&quot;.)&nbsp; You put a piece of metal into the correct acid, and the acid will dissolve the metal. Obviously a plate has two sides and you want to control what metal is exposed to the mordant.&nbsp; So you coat both sides with something that will not be affected by the acid.&nbsp; You can coat the backside with something like tar, but that won&#039;t work for the side you want to pattern if you plan to draw lines. Drawing with a stylus through a brittle ground will result in chipping, flaking, and loss of control.&nbsp; For line etchings, the side of the plate will be coated with a soft material involving a significant amount of wax.&nbsp; This is the soft ground.&nbsp; A stylus will cleanly expose the metal beneath beneath the ground without creating chips or flakes.&nbsp; An artist can draw his pattern free-hand through such a ground, so the lines take on the character of a drawing.&nbsp; Having drawn the picture, the plate is immersed in the mordant, which bites into the exposed metal leaving a recessed line.&nbsp; The acid well dissolve whatever metal it can reach, so in a very small way it immediately stars to undercut the ground and spread.&nbsp; This why an etched line appears a bit irregular and fuzzy.&nbsp; The longer the plate is left in the acid, the heavier the line will be and the darker it will print.&nbsp; An artist can control the heaviness of the lines by removing the plate from the bath, selectively coating over sections of the drawn lines, and re-immersing the plate&nbsp; to etch the remaining exposed areas more deeply.</p><p><br /></p><p>The coatings on both side of the plate have to be removed before printing.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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