Homebrew PCBs

Well,  I can say with some certainty, that the pulsar paper I have 
been using worked much better than the glossy ink jet papers I tried 
these past few days.  As I have a collection of half-empty (or 
perhaps half full) packages of ink jet papers, I thought I would 
give them a try.  I don't have exact model numbers, but I know I had 
Epson, office Depot, and HP brands in my last batch.  

The etchings I was attempting were small traces - .010" wide 
(smallest for me so far).  I had three boards to make and each one 
took three attempts to get good transfer - each of the three ended 
up with 3 different brands of ink jet paper - go figure.  So much 
for a specific brand working better than the others.  

The worst to deal with was the HP Ink Jet paper which was coated on 
both sides and was rather heavy paper.  It took forever to release 
from the PCB after ironing.

The etching went pretty much as normal - a bit uneven, but nothing 
worse than before. I did learn that paper clips should not be used 
to hang the PCB in the ferric Chloride - they disolve pretty darn 
quickly.  

I suspect that part of the cause for uneven etching may be due to 
different thickness of copper across a PCB.  Don't know for sure, 
but just a hunch so far.  The variation in thickness wouldn't take 
very much to cause uneven etching - perhaps as little as .00005" 
to .0001" would be enough to cause minor problems.

So, just thought I would share my experiences of late.

Chris