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Message:: [QUOTE="Howard Black, post: 3157528, member: 97119"]Not to digress <g>, but for anyone intend on doing this, two suggestions: First, just put a drop of the stuff on the last digit (or two, if you can't determine the decade by other means) of the date. (Don't soak the whole bleepin' nickel!) Second, as a previous poster mentioned, this is the same stuff as PCB etchant. When I was making my own boards (circa 1965), I'd first lay out my traces with a "resist pen" and then soak the copper-plated phenolic board in a bath of etchant. It would dissolve all of the copper except for that which was under the marks I'd made, which I'd then remove (via steel wool and water, IIRC). Since people do still make their own PCBs (not everyone can be sending a file off to some outfit that makes them -- some folks want their one-off board Right Now -- and not "for a fee" either), I don't see why it wouldn't make more sense to just buy a quart or so (or maybe a pint?) of etchant, and use that. You could always put it into little squeeze-dropper bottles, put a nifty label on them, and sell them online to recoup your cost for the etchant, and probably make a tidy sum in addition to your initial cost. I'm not saying that's what anyone else is doing... just that it's something you could do, if so inclined. (I don't know what etchant costs today, but it wasn't all that expensive back then -- even accounting for inflation and all that, so I doubt it'd be all that expensive now.)[/QUOTE]