Can you do wet plate collodion on copper plates?

[williaty]

A friend of mine is an artist that works in copper enamels. By the time the process is done, they're basically a sheet of copper with glass melted over one side of it. She wants to know if I can then take one and print a collodion image on top of it. I figure the collodion won't care because it'll be getting poured on glass. I'm concerned about dropping a copper plate into the silver nitrate bath because it'd be an expensive oops if it hurts the bath somehow.

Anyone tried anything like this?

[barnacle]

It's been a long time since I saw the demonstration, but I'm pretty sure you're going to end up plating the surface of the copper with silver (and probably dumping copper nitrate into the silver nitrate bath).

Ah, yes... a youtube demo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4MUGlXzREY

Probably not a good idea, then.

Neil

[williaty]

Thanks, that's the sort of thing I was worried about. Silver nitrate just likes to get into all sorts of trouble so I figured this was a risk.

[Willie]

Maybe you can use the darkroom and a Hake brush to coat the glass side only?

[Jason Greenberg Motamedi]

There are commercially available lacquers used in electro-plating baths that should work to prevent reaction between your silver nitrate and copper. For example:
http://www.caswellplating.com/mask-it-masking-lacquer-1-pint.html