Re: [BKARTS] gold finishing

[Frank Lehmann <lehmann@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Carole,

Here is the method John Mitchell taught me:

1       Pare an oversized piece of leather so thin that you can see through
the hair follicles (Scharfix or Bockman)
2       Lightly dampen the good side with water and paste out the flesh side.
3       Line with the interleaving paper from a book of gold leaf- it's
orangish in color, so if at some later time a bit peaks out around the
edges of the label, it won't be as noticeable as white paper.
4       Lightly press between sheets of baking parchment & blotting paper. If
you keep it under heavy pressure, it plates the leather very nicely for
finishing but much of the grain is gone - it depends on what effect you
want.
5       When dry, tape the leather over a false book block with 2 to 3 layers
of manila card under it.
6       Do your tooling
7       Remove the leather & cut it to the final size
8       Edge pare it
9       Prepare the place on the book's spine where the leather will go by
lightly sanding it and then working in either egg glair or paste/PVA
mix.
10      Glue out your label with a paste/PVA mix, wiping the excess off of
the edges
11      Put the label on the spine
12      I then rub it through a sheet of mylar or the like. This lets me see
if any glue is coming out on the edges so I can wipe it off before I've
spread it all around.

Hope this helps!
Frank
Lehmann Bindery

On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 14:07:54 -0500, Carole Vanderhoof wrote:
> Am trying to teach myself gold finishing on leather.  I have John
> Mitchell's book, and have had some success.  I would like to make
> labels for books and put it on the spine after I know the title is
> nice - centered, etc.  The trouble is that I have to pare the label
> edges after the gold is done, and also when I put paste on the label
> it stretches enough to cause some disintegration of the
> gold...someone tell me what I am doing wrong...
>
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