Gilding in a charged atmosphere

[Kelly Thorson]

I was gilding some routed PVC letters today and the atmosphere is very charged....storms in the making. It really messed with my laying the leaf. The letters themselves were also very charged and I found exhaling on them before each time I layed leaf helped, but I still had a tough time with the project. The leaf wanted to jump to the letters to the point it was tearing between the tip and the letter.
The solution would have been patent I guess but I didn't have enough of that on hand. The other solution would have been to postpone, but I had already sized them all.
Well I got the job done, but I was curious as to whether there were other tricks that might have made it easier. I've heard of using wax paper to make a type of home made patent. Is that just a matter of pressing the wax paper against the leaf while it is in the book? Was there anything I could have done to the sized letter to uncharge it?

[Danny Baronian]

I don't think it's the atmosphere as much as it's the static electricity within the pvc.

Was the letter cleaned with alcohol and water prior to priming, and was the entire letter painted, or are you gilding directly over the pvc? If gilding over the pvc with no primer, the pvc will retain static for a long time, priming the letters will minimize the static.

At this point, what I would suggest putting the letters on a metal table, or sheet of metal and ground the metal.

Routing pvc frequently, I always get a shock when placing the pvc on the router base regardless of the weather. By using a grounded top, that should dissipate the static enough to gild properly.

As far as wax paper, cut it in squares slightly larger than the gold and interleave with the gold, pressing onto the gold.

Danny

[Doug Bernhardt]

Hi Kelly, My thought is that your tip was charged with static elec rather than a "smug" of oil. As a rule we only use the tip at work for glass, surface gold is layed straight from the book and patent or transfer (depending where you are) is used for flat painted signs...sort of what I was doing at Dodgy Rogers last winter. It helps to charge the tip with a teeny bit of vasoline rather than your hair,....The days of "Brillcream" are gone.

[Kent Smith]

I agree with both Danny and Doug, although I prefer Vasaline Hair Tonic to pure Vasaline. I think gilding out of the book would be preferrable since you run a risk of tranferring wax from the paper to the size, even worse than rouge. Since we are in a dry area, we often use a cool mist vaporizor to eleiminate static in the air and area but only in extreme cases. Discharging the letters before sizing is critical in this case. I have had the same trouble with cast Uvex letters from Gemini and have a metal top table I use for them which dissipates the charge easily.