Aware that in times past, books and documents have been committed to metal sheets and plates, I wanted to give it a try. First I made the tiny books as described in a previous post in this blog. Then I wanted to expand the size. I found some copper and brass at a local hardware store and went to work.

I have a document that fills all of one side and almost half the other side of a 14″ sheet of legal sized paper. I wasn’t sure how long the final document might end up and unfortunately cut it a few inches short. The 4 mil copper responds very well to my tool, allowing sufficient precision in the letters. The depth of the impressions is probably dependent on the compressability of the material behind the metal foil. The copper in this project is 8″ wide.

10″ would be better, in my opinion.

I eyeballed the left and right margins and used a paper to protect the metal from skin oils and mark the line position. The 90 degree integrity of the line to the left margin was kept by lining the paper up with the metal edge and then a steel rule that I added later.

This is how I lined everything up. My stylus is a hammerless punch whose tip was just the right balance between pointy and rounded.

This is a phone camera picture that exaggerates the contrasts a little. The lettering is deep, but reasonably distinct character to character.

I wasn’t much concerned with keeping the surface pristine, but there are some things I’ll do differently next time I buy. The roll was 20 feet at $4 per foot. I bought a partial roll. Problem is that the fellow who rolled it out didn’t bother to protect the delicate surface. Neither did whoever wrote on the outside of the roll, leaving impressions. See the two channels he introduced by pulling the copper over something that was on the cutting table. It might be best to buy the entire roll next time. Then there were lables and papers and a sticky backing to deal with. I pulled them all off and removed the sticky glues with chemicals and lost any semblance of new metal on the surface. Now it was creased, wrinkled, bumpy, and ragged.

Here it is with different lighting. I expect copper to hold up pretty well in a dry indoor environment. For now it’s shiny. A patina would not detract. I will likely experiment with letter form depth to see what has the better impact.

Closeup showing the uniformity and density of the characters

On longer documents I’ve tended to write the script in alternating patterns of 2 lines empty line 3 lines empty line. for this I kept it tight to see if solid text had good impact in a large space. Still, I ran out of space on the copper and had to add an extra bit at the end. There are misspells and  corrections in the text. Erasure would be too ugly. A system had to be worked out so that I didn’t introduce error.

All things considered, the least I can charge is $125 per page. Display would be up to the buyer. There are many choices. The plates can be protected in epoxy or resin. They can be dry mounted in a display box. They can be affixed  to wood or foam or cloth covered backing. They can be framed.

The effect is to present something that looks to be of ancient date and in an unknown language.

It was a good choice for this document which is personal and which I wanted written in this script anyway because it makes it available to me in a readable but uncommon format.

Truth: I just like the way it looks : ) it’s a nice keepsake.

Final Version of this document. Two pieces but it doesn’t hurt it at all.