angel gilding on fibroseal & other gold Q's

[Felix Marcano]

Good morning everyone. Well we finally got the glass chipped & are ready to angel gild, but I got a few questions... Questions? Me? No!

Can I paint fibroseal on a portion of the glass prior to angel gilding, in order to achieve a matte gild on that particular area?

Also, how do I angel gild a certain area of the glass & then silver another? Would hot glue work as a dam?

Thanks, Felix

[Mike Jackson]

Felix,
First, let me suggest you do a search on this Forum for angel gilding and silvering. I think part of your answer has been covered before, and if not, you would still get to read a lot of great comments on the topic.

I have never personally done what you are asking with the matte centers. The reason? First, you must thoroughly clean and scrub the glass before angel gilding or silvering. If you have a layer of fibroseal down, you will not be able to clean and scrub as well. Second, the fibroseal and most paints are oil based and the angel gilding is water based. You won't want your fibroseal/varnish repelling the gold solution. Adding a drop of liquid soap "might" solve that problem, but it might also affect the angel gilding process. As I always suggest, do a few tests and if it works, let us know.

The catch to doing both silver and gold solution on the same piece has some drawbacks to consider, too. I know this has been discussed before. You probably can't reliably do both processes in one step on the piece of glass, although you might be able to lay down the gold on a large part of the glass and carefully wipe off areas before applying the silver layer. I have tried that and it has "sort of" worked. You have to watch out for contamination, keep the gold wet with distilled water, and hope the gold is still fragile enough to be able to wipe off. I have had gold grip so well it took bon-ami to remove, but that is not an option when trying this two for one gild.

Back up paint is the next problem on doing both solutions on one piece, even if doing them in two processes. Normally, the old Dekor paint was very tough and strong once it cured, but it was prone to soften and get weaker if it got too wet, and left wet for very long. Of course, the silvering proecess is a very wet procedure. If you silver first, you still need to scrub thoroughly to get a good gold finish. The mirror back up paint was more water resistant, but it was not as tough, so scrubbing to clean the glass was put the silver in jeopardy.

Again, you really should experiment on your own to see if you can pull it off. I wouldn't suggest that you couldn't do it, just that you are fighting a couple of uphill battles.

Mike Jackson

[Larry White]

I agree with Mike's comments. I have had success in both removing depositted gold, then silvering the whole, and damming for seperated, one step, solution gilding. I would have to say both techniques are fairly advanced and require full expertise and knowledge in solution gilding.

For matte work when Angel Gilding, I do it via face up acid etching. The etching leaves a texture which appears matte after gilding, and because it's the glass surface that is altered, you can scrub as much as you need to clean the glass. Again, a fairly advanced technique.

[Mike Jackson]

And furthermore, , if you angel gild your bright lines, it is relatively easy to slop in some size to do the matte centers, plus you have the opportunity of using other values of gold. (ie...lemon, white, moon gold, paladium and so forth)

I tried making glue dams for the separation on two kinds of solution gilding, but that didn't work well in my tests.

Mike

[Sarah King]

I would suggest that you do the matte centers with etching creme as Larry suggests first. Then clean the entire piece as clean as it would need to be for mirroring and let it dry. Then if you mask over the non-gold parts with vinyl you can gild and back up the gold areas pretty easily. Remove the mask, rinse the area you want to silver and silver.

Using the mask to keep the silver areas clean means you don't have to do all that scrubbing - and the glass is already clean underneath. Always do the gold first and silver second. Excess gold can be wiped off with cotton and maybe a little pumice. The silver has to be removed with silver strip and you don't want to have any silver strip residue on the glass when you're trying to gild.

I haven't done a lot of this kind of work but I've found that Sericol Fast Dry Black Enamel with a few drops of One Shot Hardener in it was pretty impervious to the water and tin etc.

Maybe Dave Smith could give us a few tips - his silver and gold combinations aren't too dusty.

[Felix Marcano]

Thanks for the info everyone. I'll be trying some samples today.