Homebrew PCBs

Last week you all may remember me having a ton of problems getting 
toner to stick to some PCB material.  Alan suggested that I pre-etch 
the board to see if that would help.  It was tried and seem to improve 
the adhesion on the smaller test samples, but not on the larger 
boards.  

I am wondering if any of you chemically smart folks here can shed some 
light on what would happen to silicone when imersed int he ferric 
chloride?  

This new board material is rather shiny, more so than the previous 
material I have bought in the past.  So I suspect that there is some 
sort of coating on the boards that is causing me these problems.

Thanks for the input!

Chris