For my first circuit board, I plugged my soldering iron into a Variac to run it cool, dipped it in beeswax like an ink pen, drew the pattern on bare copper boar

For my first circuit board, I plugged my soldering iron into a Variac to run it cool, dipped it in beeswax like an ink pen, drew the pattern on bare copper board from radio shack, then etched in ferric chloride. Getting it working involved some hacking away at bridged traces, but I was super proud. I think it was some analog guitar pedal circuit, which is what I would have been into at the time. I discovered that a jar of ferric chloride lasted almost indefinitely if I aerated it, don't know the chemistry behind that.