Ya know, there are freeware programs out there which will prevent you from
going blind -- Eagle is pretty good.

Being that it's the summer you can use a positive-resist photo-sensitive
board -- sunlight has plenty of UV .

I've heard that the peroxide etchants are very good, very clean, but haven't
tried them myself.
Jack

"Bob Liesenfeld" wrote in message
...
Me again gang,
I've been torturing myself this evening by drawing wee little lines on
scraps of blank pc board material to make 'headers' for some surface
mount ICs. In the past I've had the usual troubles with the resist
(black Sharpie) being etched away before the rest of the board was
done. I suppose most of us know that warmed etchant works faster than
room temperature juice.
In the past I have warmed my ferric chloride in the microwave. Well
tonight I got a bit carried away. I put about 4oz of juice in a
plastic cup and nuked it for a full minute. Holy smokes! That stuff
was *steaming*! So....."plop" goes my little homebrew surfboard into
the brew. That puppy was fully etched in less than a minute!
The microwave seems to still make popcorn and I am not in a coma (yet),
so I guess I will call it a success. BTW, the Sharpie ink survived
nicely.

72
Bob WB0POQ