I caught on to this today. Say you have to gold leaf a freshly painted sign, and you're worried about the gold sticking to the background. Try laying out your copy on the computer, then add a 1/8 " outline. Weld it to the letter to make the letter bigger, then cut it out of paint mask.
Now weed copy out, and apply mask to door. Now handletter the size, keeping away from the edges by 1/8". Now you can gild and engine turn the letters, and you won't have that wet edge that drags paint into the gold, like you get when you paint over a mask. The paint mask will keep the gold out of the background, and when you outline the copy it will cover up the little bit of excess where the outline goes. You could leave the mask on as you outline, then you only have to cut one side in. Or just remove it after the gold is spun, which is what I would prefer.
Is anyone already doing this? I don't know why I didn't think of this before........ Posted by Frank Magoo (Member # 3950) on :
Jeff; wonderful tool isn't it? My only concern is: if background is wet enough to be a problem for leafing, isn't the mask going to leave a pattern when you pull it off? That's been my experience, I now wait a little longer or do leaf first and clear. my 2 cents...frank
Posted by Robert Larkham (Member # 2913) on :
I use this method all the time. It works great.
Posted by Jeff Ogden (Member # 3184) on :
Rob...I figured someone was already doing it.I guess we all "discover the same things sometimes !
Frank...You're right about being careful of leaving an imprint of the mask. I have seen those flat, mottled looking imprints disappear on their own after a day, but care should be taken, for sure...
Posted by Mike Clayton Graphics (Member # 723) on :
Bob Cosgrove "Cos'" has shown me this technique, just have to careful not to let the size get near the mask, it will build up and be soft on the edge when the rest is ready for the gold.
MC
Posted by Doug Allan (Member # 2247) on :
On the first gold leaf I ever did (last years panel swap) I tried something similar, but a little different. As shown in my step-by-step I created the 1/8" outline, but then cut both the correct letter shape & the outline as quoted below:
quote:The final few pics shows the mask applied to the black lettering on the panel. The size has some yellow one shot mixed in. When I set up the file for the mask, I added an outline around the shape of the letters to be gilded. The center pic shows where this extra bit of mask was removed after sizing. This allowed me to remove mask from the edge of the size while it was still wet to avoid risk of pulling up any size, while still leaving most of the panel protected from excess gold needing to be cleaned.
Posted by Si Allen (Member # 420) on :
Nice step-by-step Doug!
That is the method that I teach people who are not experts at hand lettering!
For those who are proficient with a brush, I teach thyem to slice a raw potato and rub it all over the panel..when the juice dries, the starch will prevent the leaf from sticking...except where they apply the gold size. After all the gold work is done, a quick wipe with a damp cloth removes all the starch.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[FYI]](graemlins/fyi.gif)
