[meteorite-list] etching irons with ferric chloride solutionfrom radio shack

[mark ford]

Ferric Chloride has been used for many years for etching meteorites. (I personally etched a small Canyon Diablo in about 1985 and it has never shown any signs of rust). Iv'e even etched campos in Ferric, and they are fine too. 

 You must neutralize the iron after etching however, in Sodium hydroxide solution (caustic soda) or Sodium bicarbonate soln.)

It is important to clean the meteorite and remove all traces of etchant. And etch as quickly as possible (I.E concentrated and warm) so that the solution doesn't have time to penetrate into the meteorite.

Nitric acid is used for etching as well, this has it's own problems with stability,

In either case, as long as you take care to neutralize it, then It should give no problems. Personally I have found Ferric Chloride to give a far better quality of etch, even under mag it is noticeable.

Best
Mark




-----Original Message-----
From: Göran Axelsson [mailto:axelsson at acc.umu.se] 
Sent: Wednesday, January 26, 2005 11:17 PM
To: meteorite-list at meteoritecentral.com
Subject: Re: [meteorite-list] etching irons with ferric chloride solutionfrom radio shack

I thought that the general idea was chlorine and iron makes rusting 
meteorites.
I wouldn't use it myself. I used some to etch circuit boards in my youth and
if you drop some grains of iron chloride it will pull moisture from the air
until it's completely dissolved.
If you dip an iron into FeCl solution it will be drawn into dry 
fractures and
surfaces and to get it out without electrolysis is probably really slow 
work.

Am I wrong in my speculations? Anyone tested this already?

I use the alcohol and nitric acid etch. Not only because I have it 
handy, but
also to avoid chlorine contaminations.

/Göran

harlan trammell wrote:

> i thought i'd try it on a cheap iron- anybody got any pointers on 
> swabbing, rinsing , waiting, etc.?!
>
>
> i will be gradually switching over to yahoo mail (it has 100 FREE megs 
> of storage). please cc to: bigpineartifacts at yahoo.com 
> <mailto:bigpineartifacts at yahoo.com>
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