Manufacturing techniques:

You put firstly a wax ground. Than you do the pattern. After that you place the zinc
into a mordant bath. You remove the plate from the etching solution. Cleaned dried
and the wax ground removed with a solvent nitric or a hydrochloric acid for
zincography. Nowadays copper sulphate solution.

Zinc corrosion:

-Can occur due to absorbed water

-Can also occur due to light photocorrosion- zinc oxide and sulfide

-Oxides and hydroxides. Zincite the most common corrosion of zinc the outer layer.
In the presence of water it transforms in hydroxide. Atmospheric exposures- corbon
dioxide.

-Hydrogen peroxide which is present in precipitation is an important reactant in the

corrosion mechanism because is a strong oxidizer

- in this particular case the corrosion can occur due to many factors: the
manufacturing techniques, the environment, the ink used for the printing, the solution
used to treat the paper for the printing, the previous conservations and so on

- in the microscope we can se some white cristals where the white spots are visible
with our naked eye

Project proposals:

1. Analyse under the microscope various zinc engravings in order to see the pattern of
the corrosion, take pictures and try to identify using different bibliografic resources
what this corrosion products can be

2. Make preliminar analysis/ analytical analysis at FCT Nova (discuss with the
teacher about which ones)