Have been slowly moving forward with my experiment to create stainless steel based plates. Today I plan to finalize the cutting templates so I can cut up the 1′x2′ piece I had plated. The plan is to use 1/16″ acrylic laser-cut templates to guide the cutting on the 40″ hydraulic shear at TechShop. The real challenge is cutting accurately, with the goal being an error of less than 1/32″. I am going to send a few of the sixth plates to friends for testing. The real challenge will be cutting the 35 mm microplates I want as the cutting takes place entirely out of view under the blade guard.

I spent a fair amount of quality time this weekend in castle daguerre. Several hours were devoted to experimenting more with polishing plates. Since I was dissatisfied with my copper polish in the last go round, this time I worked on a sixth plate that I have that was donated to me by a daguerreian friend. It is already coated with silver and has been used a number of times, so it was a perfect practice subject. I wanted to see in what way working with the silver is different than the copper. Read more »

After some friendly goading from my closest dagurreian friends, I went out to the castle tonight to get some more hands-on practice with polishing. I’m sticking to bare copper plates still, since I don’t feel ready to tackle silver yet. True to my friend’s advice, I began to learn a few things that I didn’t read about in books – and confirmed a few that I had.

Fact 1 – Flat metal plates are not actually flat. Read more »

A warm and sunny day is a treat in the Bay Area in mid-winter. We are supposed to be unhappy it isn’t raining because we are likely to have drought conditions this summer, but I just couldn’t mope around properly – too many daguerreian projects were beckoning. Read more »