Many of my mom's copper plates were stored in a box in her condo. At some point, I wondered whether we could try to print from them. I asked her, and she it was fine to try and wouldn't be too hard. Most of the plates were covered by a protective coating which she said would come off in turpentine.  She thought that many of the plates were "cancelled" by a diagonal line to prevent re-printing, but so far, I haven't found any like this.

I talked to several people and they also thought it wouldn't be too hard to print (the hard part is to make them!). I first inquired about getting access to a press at a few local art schools and a printing company but had no luck. I then saw that Blick sold a home studio press for ~$1000, so I ordered that. Our local art store has the basic printing supplies,  like paper, and they told me to use a new water soluble ink that wouldn't be as messy. To get it going, I looked at a book ("Etching" by Alan Smith) and some youtube videos, and set things up in the basement.

I started with the smallest plate I could find - one which had three dogs in it.  I used a piece of cardboard to spread the ink and then quite a few pieces of newspaper to wipe it. I also had to learn how to set up and operate the press, which wasn't too bad. It was amazing to see the first print. I soon learned that every print is different, it depends a lot on how the plate is wiped. Single. The ink gets everywhere, I still have to figure out how to get that under control! I found out about a special kind of fabric called tarlatan which is useful for intermediate stages of wiping.

The first big plate I tried was "Master bed", because our neighbor Susan had told me she really liked it.  The first print I pulled worked!  But two subsequent ones didn't work as well.

Another day, I did "First snow".  I was getting better at wiping, in particular, cutting down on the time it took, and getting more control of what it would look like.  
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Step by step printing process
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What does a plate look like in the scanning electron microscope?