How to gild, or apply gold leaf to letters carved into wood. I ordered the gilding kit from gildedplanet.com. The one I ordered is the basic imitation gold kit.
If you use pink or red paint under your gilding, the gold leaf will look more rich. This is a common method for illuminated manuscripts--to mix red pigment in with the sizing to tint it pink or red. Also, using a red or pink base under gold leaf makes seeing any areas where your foil didn't stick to the sizing. Using yellow will make your leaf appear more pale, and brighter...
there is no reason if you are doing laser engraving. but with a cnc it will just frail and eat up the whole masking tape making it useless. might even ruin the engraving
I haven't done any outside work with it, but I think varnish would work. I suspect you'd want really thin coats . I'll have to try that out since it's about ready to start snowing here.
Have you tried using a soft brush to get small sections of leaf into the letters rather than using the wax paper? Also, if you guilded the letters then sanded the flat top, is the leaf so delicate that it might tear / pull out or is it sanding / scarper dust and debris that might affect the leaf? Cheers for any feedback - I'm about ot start using it.
I haven't tried a soft brush yet, but I have picked one up so I can try that. In this case the wood had to be stained so I had to get the sanding done before the gilding so that I wouldn't have to worry about getting stain on the gold leaf.
Have you considered a "vinyl paint mask"? You can finish the background wood any way you want, then cover it with the mask, which you carve right through. You can then paint, size, and gold leaf without worries of affecting the background wood. This is the way that many sign makers gold leaf.
The smallest I've done is about a 1/8" wide groove. I think you could go slightly smaller if you used loose leaf gold leaf. I haven't worked with loose leaf myself, but from what I've seen it does take a few other specialized tools to work with and seems a bit harder to use.
Thank you so much for this truly helpful video. Although I have been confused by one part of your video. I want to guild cocobolo wood it has no finish yet applied. You actually sanded the finish of, were as I have been told I need to seal the piece of wood first, with something like crystal clear shellac. Before applying size. Would you have any suggestions as to which way would be correct. Thank you so much once again for your video and time. Regards, Rahul.
+Matt Jewelry Design Products Nothing fancy like that. I started by printing the letters the way I wanted them on paper. Then I copied those letters onto the wood using carbon paper. I then carved the letters by hand using carving gouges.
@@SuAmigoElilegal It should be there for good, but it can depend on what sort of size you use. I wouldn't use a water-based size for use outside. Also, it depends on if the item gets any wear. The gold is very thin and can be worn off fairly easily if it is handled too much.
