leaf question

[Jerry Berg]

I was laying full sheets of leaf, overlapping about 1/8 inch. I laid on 8 sheets per row. I got to try out my new Smith tip and it worked out very nicely. No second gild nessecary. Anyway, when all was dry I turned the glass around and there was some varience in color in the leaves. Not all of them but a few. I used "monarch" brand 23k gold. Would this be due to this brand being a lower quality leaf maybe or something else. The color varience was only in a whole leaf and did'nt continue to any adjoining leaves, just a few here or there.

[Kent Smith]

Monarch is one of the best. What you are seeing is probaly due to the fact that you have not laid this many full leaves at a time before. Most often, partial leaves with patching will hide any variations. Some lesser brands hava a great deal more variations as do surface and patent leaf.

Why? The goal of a good gold beater is to produce each pack of gold from one single ribbon so the color from the alloys is consistant. In reality, this is just not possible. The reason that gold is booked by hand is so that the color and lack of holes and cracks can be checked on each leaf. Periodically a leaf from another batch which is close in color has to be substituted for a bad leaf. The bigger companies make bigger batches of alloy so that they can have many packs from one batch. Just like paint, even when the same formula is used there is a slight variation in each batch. There also can be a variation from one end of a ribbon to the other from a single batch. The color difference may not even be noticeable until the leaf is applied, especially to glass. That is why the "glass" grade of gold was developed, which is checked more closely for color consistancy, resulting in a higher price due to the time involved. Some of the smaller companies take more care in this squality control. This color variation is not as noticeable on surface work.