Some good news!  My copper etching experiment was a big success:

I created a bath out of corked PVC pipe that I bought at Building Resources today and kept the copper pipe in etching solution for two hours.  The etch is quite deep – deeper than I probably would want; two hours is too much.  A single coat of Montana Gold spray paint resisted the acid very well and came off very easily with Citrus Strip.  I plan on decorating all of the pipe I use for magnifying glass supports.

On that note, I once again stripped (har har) the copper pipes used for the Magritte piece and will try using car wax instead of varnish.  Supposedly it does a very good job while keeping the shine.  We’ll see. I’ve got a test application of wax drying now.

At Building Resources, I also purchased some more acrylic, both white and black, as well as some thick pieces of wood for the ShopBot CNC router, and some corrugated metal to make a Shanty Town sign with.  For those not in the know, “Shanty Town” is what we call the open space at the Art Explosion studios.  I spent some time installing various fonts and found a good sloppy one to make the sign with.  I touched it up a bit and now it’s ready to go.  I have the plasma cutter reserved on Thursday morning. Hopefully all will go well.  I’ll also be cutting the holders for the tank periscope and the gunsight, and hopefully will be able to etch them as well with the laser.

Another nice find was a side view mirror for my dinosaur piece.  I was lucky – thought I’d need to go to a car junk yard for that.