This video is brought to you by Dollar Shave Club
Hey guys I'm Nate welcome back to the workshop today
We're going to be trying an experiment that I've wanted to do for quite a while
We're going to use electricity to see if we can engrave or etched steel although
I think this idea has been done by a lot of people
I got the idea from watching a channel called the art of weapons check the link below
The basic idea is that you can use a low voltage direct current and a little bit of salt water or vinegar
to engrave or etched into steel we have a few different varieties of this setup that we're gonna try and see which one works the
Best I have a couple different types of Steel that I want to try a flat carbon steel bar and this stainless steel cup
In order to make the designs a little more detailed than just drawing with a q-tip
You can use masks to carefully outline where you want the etching to go. There are a few different types of masks
I'm going to try
Electrical tape nail polish and a sticker and then finally there are two different ways
I'm going to try applying the electricity the first is just using some 9-volt batteries and connecting directly to those
The second source of electricity is this AC to DC adapter?
Which I'm going to use to let me have a constant stream of electricity straight from the outlet
I've also seen people attempting this using a car battery charger, which should do mostly the same thing as this AC to DC adapter
Which is to put out a constant stream of 12 volt electricity at approximately 1 amp?
Let's start out by testing our high carbon steel bar to be sure we have a nice clean and non
Oxidized surface to work with let's get some high grit sandpaper and just go over this whole bar that will remove any oxidation or grease
That may be on the surface of the seal
Let's use some electrical tape to mask off areas that we don't want to engrave this wood here closely to the steel so we shouldn't
Have to worry about any of the water
seeping underneath the tape
There's a line right here that kind of looks like it's exposed steel
But it's actually just a very edge of the electrical tape and it has a little bit of dust on it
So it's white, but in truth the steel is not exposed right there at all now
let's take an exacto knife and carefully cut out the pattern that we want to engrave on to the steel I
Think I've successfully cut out the shape that I want now
I'll peel off the electrical tape on the inside where I want it and great
Supposed to sort of be a little flame not sure how much it really looks like one, but it'll still work really well for testing
There we go got the two cut out
I'm just gonna press down to make sure the tape is really nicely attached especially
There's little bits that point down into the shape. I don't want those accidentally peeling off
Now let's take out one of our batteries and connect it to our alligator clips
Attach our black to the negative terminal and the red one to the positive terminal
These little alligator clips should be available at most hardware stores. I got this set at Harbor Freight for about three bucks
I have here a small dish with a little bit of water in it. Let's just add some salt
Now we take the lead on our positive terminal and we attach that to the metal now
Let's take a cotton swab dip it quickly into the saltwater and attach it to the lead on the negative terminal our two experiments are
Going to be with salt water and vinegar to see which one works better. I've heard both can give good results
Actually here at doing something
There are tiny tiny little bubbles
Forming on this I saw a little wisp of smoke there, too
You know
Keep painting over it
You can definitely see the bubbling going on
gross
That's all just like edged away steel that has built up on the cotton swab
I'm gonna use the other end of this cotton swab to sort of clean it off a little bit
And get a new one and keep going over it again
We're just gonna take a quick break and talk about the sponsors for this video Dollar Shave Club
If you're like me and hate paying the weirdly high prices for men's grooming products now is a great time to try out Dollar Shave
Club For a limited time Dollar Shave Club has a really good deal going on for their starter kit for only 5 bucks for new members
This starter kit has their
executive razor and 3 trial sized versions of their most popular products their shave butter the body wash and one wipe Charlies
Butt wipes I really like these cartridges that have 6 blades on the front and the single blade on the back
I've been using these blades for a while
And they do a really good job of giving you a nice clean shave and precision grooming lines to get this off for a while
It's available go to
dollarshaveclub.com
King of random or click the link in the description below
Alright that seems to be working pretty well
I'm gonna try it with vinegar on the other one and see if we get any results
The cotton swab
dip it into vinegar attach it to the negative lead terminal I
Don't hear anything with the salt water it started kind of making a bubbling noise
I'm getting a little bit of discoloration on the cotton swab from where the alligator clip is biting into it
It's not doing anything on our carbon steel bar
Our carbon steel bar did not seem affected when we tested it with the vinegar
But it seemed to go pretty quickly when we used it with the salt water. Let's take off the tape and check the result
disconnect I
Would get a clip from my power source
You off the tape and see how it looks underneath
All right, so where we had the vinegar there
Might be a slight discoloration. You can see the lines going around but for the most part
That's just where the knife cut through the tape you can see that
It'll just mark it if I
Don't even have tape there
So we have the outline of where I cut and it might look a little bit less shiny where I had the vinegar
But I can't tell if it's changed much however with the salt water it really did something very visible and in fact
There's even a little bit of a lip
Where the metal has actually been worn away?
That is a very very different look right there
So salt water works great with a nivel battery
Vinegar on the carbon steel not so much
The salt water powered by a nine volt battery was doing a really good job of engraving the steel
I want to see what happens though if I take a second battery
Connect the two together and then attach the leads to the battery like this will the additional power make it engrave faster
Let's find out red to the positive terminal
black to the negative terminal
I'm going to do a slightly simpler design this time. I'm just going to cut out a square
Because a square should test. How well it works just as well as a fire
Attach our positive lead to our steel a little bit of salt water on our q-tip and attach it to the negative lead
Now using two batteries. Let's see how well this works
Certain live seeing something
It's getting the q-tip dirtier much faster, so I think that means it's working better at least faster
I don't know faster is necessarily better in this situation, but feel like it is
My that's uh
There's a lot of bubbling action right there
alright, I
Think that is enough I can take off our tape and see how it's doing
Think it off a little bit with another cotton swab here, I would say that is definitely engraved
Right up to the edges here
There is a very clear lip
Where the steel has dropped down it's a very small amount I'd say probably a fraction of a millimeter
But it's nothing you know we can catch the blade very easily
I think I can they even threw my gloves. I can feel it with my fingers and fingernails
Well, I would say that two batteries definitely works faster than one battery, which should be no surprise
If one is working two is gonna. Have more power running into it
I don't know if it's necessarily a good thing it does seem to be a little harder to control and give a little bit more
of a splotchy result
Maybe I just need to be more careful about moving the cotton swab quickly so it doesn't stay in one place too long
The battery differently works now
I want to try moving on to our AC to DC
Adapter if you're like me you might have several of these floating around your house somewhere with no idea what they go to or if
You don't have any you can often pick them up at a thrift store for just a couple of bucks
Failing that they're also available on Amazon
what you want to look out for is one that says that it has an output of 12 volts and
One camp this small line with three dots underneath. It means. It's putting out DC power not AC power
That's what we want this end that's on the power cord is not what we want, so let's just snip it off
Now let's separate the do cords and strip back a little bit of the plastic so we have the exposed wire underneath I
Believe the wire with the black dotted line running along it is the negative terminal
If it doesn't work very well, then we'll just switch them and see if that helps it
It's gonna fold up a little bit to make it a bit easier for the Gator clip to grab on to it
Now let's plug in our adapter try a different shape this time. I'm just gonna make a longer slightly squiggly line
All right
Connect our what? I hope is our positive terminal to the metal our salt water covered cotton swab connected to the negative terminal
See how this works oh
We got bubbling pretty much right away, which I think confirms that this is in fact the negative terminal
I would say this is a little bit more bubbling action than one 9-volt battery
but less than two, which makes sense since this is 12 volts in each of the batteries is 9 volts I
Saw a fair amount of bubbling when I first started applying it like this
But it hasn't been changing the color at all and there's been no buildup on the tip of the cotton swab it's been building up
Where the alligator clip was holding it, but not on the tip of the swab?
So I'm wondering if I have my positive and negative terminals switched
so I'm just going to attach the black one to the bar and put the cotton swab in the red clips and then see if
It makes a difference
It's not bubbling as much as it was before, but it's definitely discolor anymore
which I think is the more important look because it means it's actually doing something to the metal I
Was doing a lot more than it was before
So I clearly had my positive and negative terminals switched on that wire
You can see that this time
All of the build-up on the cotton swab is where it's touching the steel and not where the alligator clip is gripping it
Beautiful just like how we were getting before
There's definitely an edge on the steel a lip that can kind of catch the blade that has removed some steel
Right up to the line
Saltwater seems to be working great both sources of electricity seem to be working great and electrical tape is making a great mask I do
Want to try one other type of masking and that's nail polish?
I'm gonna be using black nail polish because it will be easier to see the contrast between where there is and is not a
Protective coating, but you can use any color you've got available
Our nail polish is dry so now let's try
Scratching in some lettering to see if we can use the nail polish as a mask the same way we did the tape
I'm sorry
tearing strangely
He's not actually sticking very well to our steel. It's just sort of lifting up in spots. I was trying to make the letter K
But it didn't stay stuck down very well. Just kind of filled right off
I'm not sure if it's gonna be the best thing to use on a smooth steel surface
I was supposed to say king with the bit that broke off of the top of the K
It looks more like it says ring well. Let's give it a try anyway
I
Think I've gotten a decent engraving there
normally, I would say get some acetone to clear all the
nail polish off but
Coming off so easily been I'm not sure that's necessary
Weirdo you can definitely see the engraving
Indeed engrave the metal pretty well, but the nail polish itself just kind of started coming up while I was using it
I'm not sure if there's a way to make it adhere better to the steel than what I did
I hit it with the very high grit sandpaper
Then I actually washed it off with some isopropyl alcohol before I applied the nail polish
And it was completely dry when I applied it, but it just isn't sticking very much
Maybe it's just not meant to stick to steel very well, or maybe it's just because it's a low cost
nail polish either way
I think the electrical tape works way better as a mask if you've tried this and you used nail polish
And you had good results I'd like to know what you did. Tell me about it in the comments
I was thinking I might try a second one which is why I did two different patches of nail polish
But the first one really didn't impress me
so I think I'm just gonna leave it be and say let's move on to trying our steel cup instead of our steel bar I
have here a
Stainless steel cup and I want to see what happens if I try and engrave onto the outside of it this could be very useful
For personalization in a very permanent way. I also have one of the methods that I want to try for masking this off
I'm going to be using this king of random sticker in the same way that I was using the electrical tape
I'm not going to try and cut out every single detail of this logo
But I am going to try to go around the main crown outline and then this one Pentagon shape that's touching the crown
We'll see how it works
Now let's just add a little bit of electrical tape along the sides, so I don't accidentally engrave anything
I don't want to all right. We've got the mask set up now. Let's try and engrave it
This is a much larger area than I've tested before so I hope it works out well
One of the things I'm really looking for is for the surface texture and shine to change
The stainless steel has this brushed look that gives it a little bit of shine
When we were doing our tests that shine a lot of it went away
And I think that was a good sign that it had really engraved down into it a little bit
It is definitely losing some of its shininess
Wearing down the steel little by little just what I want
now I think I have a pretty good edge into the metal so I'm going to try switching the leads and using the vinegar to
See if I can darken the metal after I've edged it
Oh
Beautiful
I'm just use a little bit of alcohol on a cotton swab and clean it off a little bit
Hopefully it won't completely ruin the finish
There we go using a combination of both edging methods one to engrave down into the metal and one to slightly stain it
We've gotten a very good result
I think the metal is engraved it is stained, and I'm pretty sure that's gonna be on there just forever
I'm really looking forward to it. I'm also curious
What will happen to it over time if it will darken or lighten?
And we'll just have to see
This has been a really fun experiment learning how to use electricity to engrave into steel, which is pretty cool
It doesn't take a lot of work
You can easily use a 9-volt battery to make it work
Or if you can find one of these AC to DC adapter cords, I think they work even better
And then you have a constant source of electricity that you know isn't gonna drain and run out
We found that using the tape or the sticker works very well as using a mask
I couldn't get good results with nail polish
But maybe you know a secret to make it work a lot better if you do let me know
Now if you have anything metal that you want to permanently mark with a symbol or a logo or a name
You know how to do that yourself?
maybe you have a knife that you want to put your logo on or you have a steel cup and you want to put your
Name on it, so everyone knows that it's your cup this cup even came with a steel stri suppose
You could try and gravy your name right onto the straw
Special shout out to the channel art of weapons for giving us this idea. Thank you
Thank you guys for joining us for this project today, and we will see you in the next one. Talk to you then
Here's the pile of the really disgusting looking huge cotton swabs
They look like someone was cleaning something terrible with them if you clean your ears with a cotton swab
And it looks like this see a doctor immediately once again. Thank you to Dollar Shave Club for sponsoring this video go now to dollarshaveclub.com
/King of random to get your trial kit for only 5 bucks with Free Shipping