The Framers Forum

I am practising water gilding. My main problem is that I am not achieving laylines after every sheet overlaps. Is there a way of adding them once finished.

Thanks

Lay lines are where the gold leaves slightly overlap each other when being laid by the process of watergilding. They only appear when the gilded surface is rubbed back with a light abrasive so as to show a distressed and aged look.
As well as creating a rather beautiful effect on the gild, they are a reliable indicator of real gold gilding on antique frames and whether the gilding is oil or water gilding. Oil gilding does not allow for any lay-line effects.
There can be a tendency to overuse the effect on new gilded frames. The lay lines look best when they appear incidental over the surface and not marching along in regimental sequence which is a bit of a cliche.

Unfortunately there is no way reproducing the effect if the initial preparations have not been carried out. And what's even more annoying is not finding out until all the gilding has finished and dried.

And so i have to direct you to Video 3 of my online gilding course.

https://www.dermotmcardle.co.uk/

Here you will be shown how to make the correct preparations to create and control the appearance of lay lines.
Then if go to Video 6, you can see the various ways to distress the gilding, expose the laylines and age the gilding in a most convincing way.

I did forget to mention that in addition to Video 3 of my gilding course, Video 4 completes all the information required for the creation of lay lines within the gilding.

I cheat.

Compomouldings wrote: ↑Mon 18 Jan, 2021 10:16 pm I am practising water gilding. My main problem is that I am not achieving laylines after every sheet overlaps. Is there a way of adding them once finished.

Thanks

You could cut thin bits of gold and lay them by breathing on the gilding (burnished) and just using the moisture in your breath rather than water, drinking a hot drink helps before but as you can imagine it's a bit of a nightmare to do. I gild iregulary but have a lot of experience in Londons top framers and still find really neat lay lines hard.

prospero wrote: ↑Wed 20 Jan, 2021 12:29 pm I cheat.

Me too! It looks passable,, but to look exactly like the real thing, it has to be the real thing and that means real gold leaf, but not everyone knows what the real thing looks like, so most customers are happy. Some don't even know what gold lay lines are.

Well said Mark. To a lot of people, a gilded frame is just a 'sparkly' finish. So what!
If however you tell them that that nice shiny line you've added around their picture is REAL Gold LEAF,- then it's WOW!
And they'll be pointing it out a dinner parties for weeks later.