Intaglio Etchings - FeCl & Cu Plates

The question of wiping plates came up on WetCanvas so I was thinking about intaglio plates. I have, over the past few years, been trying to do some intaglio etchings using ferric chloride solutions and copper plates rather than the old nitric acid method with zinc that I used in college. I have had some success but I find ferric chloride more difficult to get going, the solution bites so slowly plus with the formation of bubbles on the plate you have to have the plate upside down and I haven't worked out a good way to do that. I have tried to speed the process up using Edinburgh Etch solution, but my EE solution didn't work well - it didn't seem to bite deeply into the plates. I hear I must add some copper to the solution to kickstart the EE solution, but my FeCl had already been used so it should have had copper in it. The print shown is a proof using FeCl and hard ground/line etch as well as an aquatint etch, printed using oil based ink. I made this in 2005, you think I should get to printing the edition soon? I guess I have been distracted! If you read this and have any pointers on the FeCl bite issue, please leave a comment. I had a little trouble with paragraph spacing. The Preview is different than the edit and the BLOG is different then either although I save edits so please excuse until I figure this out. Thanks. blr