The herald and mail. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1873-188?, 1876-10-27
GOLD LEAF.
How ia II Made. and the Ven WiiO MHA's ft.
How an Ounce Of Gold is Made to
Cover One Hundred Square Feet
of Surface.

s. is only small part of the purposes
|, which it is applied. The book-binder
I are among the gold beatel's best clIstc
= mers, almost fabulous quantities of tn
- leaf being used in finishing, lettering
= | gliding edges and otherwise adOrniny
books. The humblest muslin binding
) has at any rate its title in gold letters
and on the beveled and costly bindi2g
S of ANIMALS and holiday works gold leaf il
? no slight item of expense. The sigI
1 writers and fancy workers use large
quantities. The gilded and elaborate in
scriptions on the windows of the Anglo
Bengalce and other disinterested life
loan, trust and insurance companies, and
those of the buncombe bank and similar
institutions, as we'll as those of humber
pretensiOns, form constant demand.
Our kind but cruel friends, the dentists,
too, are patrons of the gold beater. For
the dentist is made not only special ar
ticle, chemically pure, but cunning pro-
cesses elaborate the foil after it has
reached the minimum of tenuity, into a
soft spongy mass which can be deity
punched into the remOtest Granny of a
| tooth. For him little golden cylinders
are spun out of fiossy webs, that he may
counteract the effects of taffy or the
4
his use are made little spongy nuggets,
| that lock like solid cubes, but which roll
up between the fingers into golden pei
| lets.
Entering a gold beating establishment
| the visitors attention is first attracted
| by the din of twenty or thirty hammers,
| weighing from eight to eighteen pounds
| apiece, falling under the skillful glasp of
the sturdy Founders, on the pack in
which is the precious metal. The men
resemble so many blacksmiths at the an
vii, except that their blows are less rapid
and their strokes more measured and reg
ular and there is more rebound to the ham
mers Then, too, without changing the
moDotony of the stroke, the gold beat
er shifts his hammer from one hand to
tie other, and turns the little bunch of
skin on which it descends first to one
side and then G. the opposite one, and
then back again, for he cannot pound
steadily in one place; his packet must
be kept in motion. You are in a dusty,
dingy room. White chalk dust is on
the floor, ;hei ianvils, the walls, every
where. 1t STILES on your ciotting,
and you can see it floating in the air
There are fragments of rotten stone scat |
tered about, waiting to be pulverzed, and |
pieces of yellow parchments, and scraps |
of gold beater's skin, and once in 2 while !
you see little yellow bit OF gold leaf on
the floor. AS you near one OF the |
beaters you see more of thcIn, and the |
question is quickly put, " Why, you
don't waste gold in that manner, do |
you ?"
"Oh, no." is the reply. We waste
nothing here. The very air is full of
hying atoms of gold, but we save most |
of it, Every little while each particle
of dust is swept from the floors and put |
through the fire. Here is the sink |
where the men wash their hands. You
see this little box through which the
waste water runs? 1t catches many |
dollars worth of gold in a year. Every
thing is saved. If the men drop these |
little scraps of leaf, it's their own loss,
not ours-in fact, it's our gain, for
every man is given so much gold in
weight, and he is required to return the
weight in gold leaf. If he lOOses any he
has to pay for it.
Chow much do the men eaTn?"
They do piece work. This is en-
pIoyment where the workman is known
by his chips. In beating gold properly
there is a certain amount of waste in
proportion to the amount furnished.
The workman receives so much gold,
and so many ounces of it make just so
much waste. The workman carefully
saves the waste, and returns in what he
finishes. The waste he melts over into
a button, and the number of buttons of
certain weight that he has at the end of
the week indicate how much gold he
has beaten The buttons must Cally
with the amount he had given him to
beat. He gets pay by the button. If
he turns in a greater proportion of but
tons than he had gold, we know that he
has been making waste purposely, and
that goes against him as a workman.
At the same time the men are very care
full to take care of all their waste, but a
little bit of the thinnest will get on
the floor sometimes. It's just like all
piece work, some are industrious; some
lazy. They make from $l2 to $40 a
week.
The ingot of gold comes from the mint
in shape, perhaps, five inches long, one
inch wide, and not quite so thick. 1t |
must first be alloyed for color, for fash
ions prevail in gliding as in everything
else, and leaf varies from almost white
yellow to deep golden color. Silver is
employed to tighten and copper to darken |
it. Having received the alloy it is re-
cast into nearly the same shape it had at
the mint, and then the thinning process
begins. On the same principle that
railroad iron is made, the bar is forced be-
tween iron rollers, being annealed each
time it passes through, that its duccility
may be preserved, until it has become
golden ribbon, and the fifty pennyweights
It at first contained, instead of being; six
inches are seven yards long. When this
degree ofitenuity is obtained, the ribbon,
then about an inch and half in width,
is cut into squares. and placed i'll the =
70 cutch." The "cutch" is book three
inches square, containing leaves made
of a peculiar kind of paper, partly an
imal and partly vegetable, the ccmpo- '
sitien of which is a secret. These
clutches are imported from Lc1don, I
where alone the best are made. In the :
cutcn the gold is beaten with a hammer, |
fourteen or fifteen pounds, un- {
Ill the square of metal reaches the edge.
This generally takes about half an hour.
The workman, then, with peculiar tool
called a wagon, which is not un- !
ike a sled with one runner sharp {
ened, cuts the leaf into four parts, ]
yauging by the unsharPened runner,
.hus insuring square and equal {
edges. Each of these new squares is 7
then placed in the Shoulder" which is
simply a collection of the loose leaves, I
about four inches square, made of the in I
sestines of the OK, prepared in a way I
which is a trade secret The edges are {
wrapped in vellum, and frightened with I
l strip of reed and here the leaf is beaten q
again with an eight pound hammer for I
5wo hours and a halt, when it is ready i
or the "pack," or g0ldbeater's skin. q
Goldbeater's skin is made of the csc L
cum of the OK 1t is well cleansed and t
.he mucus surface are doubled together ! c