Boxed, Cut & Gilded

[Lee Littlewood]

Here is a form of "internal shade" that I saw in New Zealand. The first one (Dalziel's) was in a small, older village and I just hopped all over it. But later in Aukland (the capitol) I found it on a simple entry door (Tenants letters are about 1.25") - nicely done but loose, like a usual technique. I was only in Aukland for 2 days, and I'll bet that there was more of it to be found here & there around town. Dave Smith calls it a "box cut" and says it is a normal technique in England. Lucky guys.

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So last fall I got a job where I could try it out. A hipster bar, only about 15' wide by 25' deep, but full of house-made flavor extracts and drinking vinegars and such (just trying to set the scene here), and they said, "think leather & mahogany & whiskey". And they had this nice logo, based on wood type. Seemed like it was just asking to be a box cut.
First picture is the black outline printed on and the centers put in with quicksize, then abraded gently with 0000 steel wool.

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Then a kaolin rub and watergild over all, back up inside the outlines with chromagold (dries fast and might hide a pinhole or two), then first shade in black over all (door photo,about 3" letters).

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Next day mix a brown to match the "privacy stripe" vinyl and do the splitshade, again over all the back - that gold is covered. After it cures fully (I like to give it a week, especially with this many coats of paint) I can apply the clear Tedlar film that Signgold used to sell - it is very soft so a window washer's squeegee will slide over the edges, very clear so the clear "balloon outline" isn't noticeable, and way durable - and cut the balloon outline with an Exacto knife. At least when it's fresh the excess peels off easily; I don't know what it would be like after a day or two. Does anybody know another supplier?

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What you see under the name is a privacy panel so people wouldn't be looking up your skirt when you sat at the window (I did say it was small, didn't I?). The client thought that woodgrain would be too busy, so it is a standard color of vinyl. To keep it from being too boring I cut 1/2" strips of Agoya laminated shell (from Rescue Pearl Co in Rescue, California - no website - 530-676-2770 - she said that Duke of Pearl helped get her started when he went wholesale only), backed them with black vinyl and ran the stripe under the brown vinyl. Window & door aren't too big, I only used 6 sheets of it.

There seem to be a lot of things that can be done in a "Boston Gild" (Leblanc's term for a single gild over varnish that gives a matte/mirror effect in one gild). I don't know about Boston, but Chicago had lots of bevelled gold lettering, big & small, roman & sans & script. And I saw some nice photos from Australia where simple highlights were put in with varnish - super quick and quite striking. And of course the standard varnish centers. It looked to me as if some of the Italian lettering that Dan Seese posted here a year ago was sort of 'sunk center' but shifted left or right, not diagonally like 'box cut'. What else is out there?

[erik winkler]

Lee,

Why did you rub the dired size with kaolin after you abraded gently with 0000 steel wool?
Seems like a technique I did not heard of...

Erikieee

[Lee Littlewood]

I think that kaolin is the best thing since sliced bread. I have a pounce bag of it in my kit, and we use it whenever we want to de-grease something.
Here we have dried black paint outlines and dried quicksize centers, and we want to flow watersize in a nice sheet over everything - LeBlanc says to add 2 drops of detergent to your size, and that will help but does not always suffice. Dusting with kaolin powder (actually I kind of rub it over as if it were pounce) and then wiping off with cotton or a damp chamois (it will want to stick to the clear areas, and we want them to be clear) seems to let watersize sheet evenly over everything. I think the kaolin absorbs the tiny bit of grease that rises to the surface of dried paint and allows it to be wiped off, but that is just theory.

One other thing that may be helping is our way of cleaning the glass. We clean glass for a gold job the same as we would for a spray-silver job: first commercial spray cleaner and paper towels, maybe a razor blade if you feel lumps as you wipe off the foam. Then pumice and detergent on a felt block and rub hard over the surface - you are thinking as if grinding down to a fresh layer, and lean into it. Wipe off with fresh paper towel, and do it again with the other side of the felt block. Wipe off with fresh paper towel, and it should be almost chemically clean. A test is to spray clean water and see if it sheets well, then wipe off with another clean paper towel. If plain water will sheet, then watersize will have no trouble.
This may be overkill for a gold job, but it is really pretty easy. The time it really helps is if you want to powder puff aluminum over the back - for opacity, or some of my designer clients don't like black on the inside of their signs but silver/grey is usually okay - and unless the glass is really clean it can be a big hassle to wipe off the excess bronze powder. If you are doing it on the outside (a "snapper special" or "dynamite job") it is usually okay to leave a haze of bronze on the glass and let the rain pull it off; that kind of job is quicker and cheaper.

[erik winkler]

It is exactly the same what i learned last week when removing the oily toplayer while woodgraining.
They decreased with chalkpowder. Kaolin is much better.

Thank you.