Shinium - Brilliance by Design

As requested by someone on Reddit's wonderful /r/crafts subreddit, a short tutorial on gilding. Gilding is not as hard as you might expect, and with a simple beginner's kit , you can get going right away. I suggest purchasing an imitation leaf kit to start with, as messing up gilding aluminium is an awful lot cheaper than messing up with 24k gold leaf! OK, so here are a pair of rings waiting to be gilded. They were made as per the tutorial on making metal rings I did last week. One silver, one copper. One bright and mirror polished, one satin finish. They need to be clean, so no finishing polish or wax just yet. I'm going to use two different gilds on these, in two different styles - but your options are limited only by your skills with a brush and your imagination. Gilding, being an ancient art, has lots of lovely old language associated with it. Gilders don't use glue, they use size. It's basically just glue. I like to use a nice fine lining...

Shiny! This simple ring is a great way to start to learn how to work with metal. I've tried not to use too many specialist tools, so this should be - hopefully - helpful for beginners. Things you will need: metal, silver solder, blowtorch, hacksaw, emery cloth (or wet-and-dry paper), hammer. Things you don't need but will make life easier: file, solder flux, nylon/rawhide mallet, power drill/lathe, ring mandrel, ball pein hammer. First up, metal. Almost anything you can buy in sheet form is OK, I'm using copper because it's cheap and fairly easy to work with. Brass would be another good option, maybe even silver if you're feeling wealthy. I buy my metals from  Cookson Gold  in the UK, other suppliers are available. Note: aluminium is not suitable, it melts at a lower temperature than the solder does. Using some Maths ( 2 x pi x (r + metal thickness) ), or  this useful calculator , work out how big you need your blank to be, and mark and cut. I'm ...