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We had a big job to gild today with 16" V-carved letters. We learned a new trick for applying leaf quicker and better.
This was a good candidate for patent gold as the letter strokes were very wide and shallow. But we only had loose gold. In the past we have smoothed squares of wax paper over the leaves to pick up the leaf and carry it to the sized surface. Today, we were more behind than usual. We tried picking up the leaves with a gilders tip and laying them in the broad strokes, but we were getting to many fold-overs and erratic coverage. After one letter, we switched to the wax paper method, which saved gold and make a shinier gild, but was time consuming. Cut the paper, lay it onto a sheet of gold, smooth it out, burnish it onto the letter, then cut another piece of wax paper.
Till I started reusing the same piece of wax paper over and over. We'd never done that before. I'd never heard of it or seen it at any meet. Well, it works Great! Dick and I were a gilding machine. I was laying in the gold as fast as he could come behind me and brush it down. Even though the wax paper was peppered with the remnant shards of the prior sheet of leaf, it retained enough cling to pick up each new sheet of gold intact. We made record time and had a real nice gild. Saved on wax paper too, hehe.
If you've never tried picking up loose gold with wax paper, check it out. Another tip most gilders already know is to cut the wax paper-adhered gold face down on a hard surface and slice it into strips for gilding around borders.
That's all for today. I learned something new. It was a good day.
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Well maybe I will just have to give that a try sometime. I don't get to do as many gold leafed signs as I would like, but I will remember your tip. Thanks!
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Hi Joe, Yes, that's the way I do it on loose leaf, and accually about the only way I feel I can do a good job. One more tip for gilders is: When you are getting split voids (cracks) in you application that you can't see because of the glare, on patent gold take a blank use tissue from a used leaf and lay it pressed up against the layed leaf area. You can easily see all of the little cracks and voids, so that you can patch them. I am doing much better work now since I have caught on to this trick. Bronzeo
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