Just in case anyone would like to know what happened to the "copper soup"... After allowing the plates that were in the solution to etch (thankfully they came out just fine), I let the solution sit out and react with the oxygen in the air for three days. This would typically revitalize the solution and change its color back to a brighter, lighter green. I had used this solution several times in the past and always done this to reuse it again later. This is the first time I have encountered the precipitate and "soup skin" effect with this solution.
As you can hopefully see the solution has become lighter in hue but, it has also evaporated quite a bit and now has a thick layer of precipitate at the bottom of the tray.
After a bit of agitation the precipitate gets stirred up and the milky white color returns. I'm quite certain that if I where to place some copper in this solution it would still get etched, but I just don't trust it at this point as I am really not sure what is going on at the moment.
As I don't trust this stuff any longer and it is evaporating faster than it is "re-activating" I'm going to say good bye to the copper soup. For my next etch I will mix up a fresh batch of etching solution and proceed to use that to over and over and we shall see if I end up with another batch of copper soup... we shall just have to wait and see... That's all for now but I'm about to finish a few new projects so I'll be back soon.
Peace and Love.
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