gold wipes right off glass

[Felix Marcano]

Good morning everyone. I chipped some glass. Sprayed a little tinted fibroseal with a preval into the chipped area. Gilded & burnished. When I size for my second gild, the gold wipes right off except in the chipped area. What could have happened?

Thanks, Felix

[Raymond Chapman]

What are trying to achieve? Do you want the gold on all areas of the glass or just in the chipped areas? What did you use for size? Was the fibroseal just to add a tint color to the gold? How did you burnish the gold?

Do you mean that the gold just floats off the glass with the second gild? How did you "wipe" it?

Lots of questions, but it will help to solve the problem.

[Felix Marcano]

What are you trying to achieve?
I'm trying to achieve a gilded chipped letter with a mirror outline. The centers (chipped areas) have a slight tint (fibroseal with a drop or 2 of prussian blue)

Do you want the gold on all areas of the glass or just in the chipped areas? No, only on the chipped area & a thin mirror outline.


What did you use for size? 4 diamonds into 2 cups distilled h2O.

Was the fibroseal just to add a tint color to the gold? yes. & I had no problem in this area whatsoever.

How did you burnish the gold? Hmm. I dunno... Until I got all the creases removed, I guess.

Do you mean that the gold just floats off the glass with the second gild?
Yes.

How did you "wipe" it?
When I was resizing it (with the size brush)

Thanks Raymond.

[Raymond Chapman]

Thanks for replying so quickly and to each question.

There are a lot of expert gold folks on this site who should be able to figure this out.

Some suggestions: Possibly the glass was not clean enough. You may have put too much pressure with the brush on the second guild. Just run the size over the top of the area and let it run down...not actually touching the gold with the size brush.

Anybody got any ideas?

[John Studden]

Felix, Sounds like a contamination problem to me. Start form scratch, re-clean the glass, wash the size brush & container in soapy water & rinse well. Because of the varnish in the chip area add a drop of Ivory washing up liquid to pull the gold down, make sure you use clean cotton every time, something got dirty along the way. It could be the cotton picked up something from where it was sitting, I think if you do all this there should not be a problem. Cleanliness is the most important thing in Gilding, never reuse anything especially old cotton or paper towels that you used to clean the glass previously..............Hope this helps. John

[Felix Marcano]

Thanks John.

[Mike Jackson]

Felix,
Besides all the issues that have been discussed, here are a few more options.

You say you used 4 Diamonds of geletin sheets per pint and that did not work. Right? If all else seems to be okay in your proceedure, I'd test this part.

When developing a sheet of paper in the dark room (way, way back), we did a test strip. The exposure of the negative was set to 1 second intervals and shot down to a strip of paper maybe two inches wide (test strip), using a piece of cardboard to protect about 90 percent of the strip on the first exposure. Then the cardboard was slid down the strip to expose another 10% of the paper. That was continued until there was about 10 exposures. At one end, there was 10 seconds and at the other end there was only 1 second. Once the sheet was developed, you could see which time exposure gave the best results, then expose the full sheet for that amount of time. Got the picture?

For your experiment, try adding just one diamond and gild a leaf or two, add one diamond and leaf a couple of tests and so forth. Write down the batch concentration on the glass with a grease marker. Continue until you have a strength of about 10 diamonds in your mixture. Once all are dry and ready, clean all of them. At some point, you will find the one that holds the gold well, but not too stubborn to clean. You'd also want to repeat this experiment for the heavier leafs.

To be honest, everyone actually should go through this little test process, but most just rely on what Rick said or someone else said to use. I'd have to look in my notes, but I seem to recall using 6 or 7 diamonds per pint on our pieces. Still, I would have done a test swatch or two before using a lot of gold on a big piece.

If you are still in the learning stages, I'd suggest you (and anyone else) get in the habit of doing inexpensive test pieces before wasting time and money on a process on a bigger final project. This might sound like a broken record, because I've written it here and in my SignCraft articles over and over and over. Do Test Pieces!

I would have also done a few test pieces to see if I could water gild over a fibroseal coated area on a piece of reverse glass. I'd want to know if the size would crawl. I'd want to know if the water size might resoften the fibroseal, causing gold to stick to it. I'd want to know if my water size would cause more problems scrubbing the excess gold. In short, I'd want to feel confident the fibroseal would work for my intended purposes.

And one more...I'd probably have done this little fibroseal test to see if that would work at all, but I probably would have done a comparison test where I left the area I wanted matte OPEN, then I would have come in and done a (reverse) surface gild in the open areas once I did the bright lines in the traditional manner. I might like that look better, regardless of the effort or time savings in either method.

Good luck,
Mike Jackson

[Felix Marcano]

Thanks Mike

[Kent Smith]

In addition to what has already been said, I would suspect the Fibroseal. As a varnish, it tends to be more oily than quick rubbing which is why it has been used for a size in the past. The free oils will migrade with the gelatin. I have found that water gilding over a chip requires a much stronger gelatin size. I think a surface gild on the fibroseal would work better, finished off by the water gild to brighten the areas and give you rhte bright line.

[Ron Percell]

Mikes & Kent are correct, increase to at least 5-6 diamonds and when using Palladium or Silver increase the amount.

You should also try Mikes method to find your best results on a test panel.