I am interested in applying some gold leaf to silver but I'm not sure how to go about it, can anyone give me any advice?
I am interested in applying some gold leaf to silver but I'm not sure how to go about it, can anyone give me any advice?
Last edited by shaiadancer; 05-06-2011 at 08:41 AM.
I believe the only way to apply gold leaf to silver would be to use size/glue though this would not be very durable, it is way too thin to tolerate being torched I know I tried. I have seen mention of being able to use gold foil, which is quite a bit thicker but cannot find the thread which explained the method, I would guess foil could be fused to fine silver or maybe even soldered using a very thin scraping of paste type solder.
The art of applying gold foil to fine silver, including pmc/art clay, or to sterling silver that has been treated to give a fine silver surface is called Keum Boo. It's an old Korean technique that literally translates as "attached gold". No solder or glue is involved. The pure gold and pure silver fuse together through a combination of heat and pressure - put simply you heat the silver, apply the foil and then burnish it in place. It takes practise, but the results can be stunning.
Jo
Daisychain Jewellery - Handcrafted sterling silver jewellery and jewellery tuition
www.daisychainjewellery.co.uk
www.daisychaindesignsjewellery.blogspot.com
how fine is the gold leaf and where do you get it from? I'm guessing it's less thin than regular gold leaf?
A word from your sponsor: Gold for Keum Boo.
heh, ok, thank you! eyewateringly expensive. I wonder if you can do tiny bits of keum boo or if you need a largish area to get good adhesion.
they do? so nearly hundred quid sheet could stretch a long way?
Hi
Coming out of lurkdom to add that The PMC Studio sells 3 x 4 cm sheets of gold foil for Keum Boo for £12.46.
DianeT
Perhaps Cookies have their decimal point in the wrong place? There's only a couple of quid's worth of gold in the sheet!
Oops! I greatly malign them, they're selling the sheet with imperial dimensions (and SI thickness), which makes it £11 worth of gold.
Last edited by Joe; 08-06-2011 at 01:12 PM.
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