The daily morning journal and courier., 1906-12-22
GLIDING A DOME.
Boston State House Takes a Third of
 an Acre of Gold Leaf.

A1oStOll DldI6 f1OuSe 4dheS q IHlTQ or
 an Acre of Gold Leaf.
 The problem of regilding a dome may be visualized by looking at a derby hat and imagining that dozen ants have the task of covering 1t with squares of beaten gold, each square neatly fitting it's neighbors
 Naturally says the Boston Tran script, these miniature workmen will commence at the top, cautiously de- scendng backward and leaving behind them on the almost fiat crown of the derby a plain of gold surprising to flies and other onlookers.
 Then, from working on an almost fiat surface our industrious ants will find the derby gradually becoming more and more precipitous until the descent is finally altogether perpendi- cular, and if their legs and dieas of equilibrium were manlike instead of antlike they must inevitably fall off on the table and be carried away in an ant ambulance.
 To make the figure complete, there fore, it would be necessary to erect miniature staging all around the derby, to place in addition an electric fan Representing the winds of November within easy range of it and to persu- ade somo conscientious smoker (re- presenting the activity of neighboring chimneys) to draw his chair to the table and every now and then envelop the scene of operations in a cloud of smoke.
 For the present regilding of the dome of the Boston State House eight pounds of gold must be hammered to the necessary thinness to provide the material with which to begin gliding. and gold leaf of the best quality suf- ficient to cover nearly q third of an acre must b eturned out to order.
 This gold arrived in Boston in ingots about six inches long, one inch wide and one-eighth of an inch thick. One of these ingots having been alloyed for color, is first rolled and annealed between steel rollers until it becomes gold ribbon eight yards long. This ribbon is then cut into 200 squares, corresponding to the 200 leaves of the cutch, which is made in London of a peculiar kind of paper that will stand continuius beating and whose com position is a trade secret.
 Beaten for three quarters of an hour between the leaves, of the cutch with a twelve or fourteen pound hammer, each square of gold spreads until 1t covers nine square inches, Each of these squares is cut into four eqaul parts and these inserted between the 500 leaves of the shoder This is simi lar to tte cutch, but one inch wider and longer and made of the intestifles of oxen. Here is is hammered for an hour with an eight pound hammed
 Taken from the shoder the sheets are again cut into four equal parts and the original eight yards of ribbon have become $500 pieces of thin gold, about five inches square.
 Finally these squares, thousand at a time are inserted in a mould of thousand leaves of OK intestines (and here again the exact preparation of the five hundred intestines necessary to make a single mould is trade se- creD, and gradually beaten to the re- quired thinness.
 Taken from the mould the leaves are trimmed by young women, hand ling the delicately with wooden pin cers, to squares of three and half inches twenty-five squares being in- serted between the leaves of small | paper book, and twenty of these books l being combined in pack for the con venience of the workn1en who are later l to transfer the beaten gold to its final | position.
 In the case of the dome the entire | gliding will probably empty 275 packs, 1 or use Up some 137,00O squares of l gold. This gold is of 28 carat quality | beaten to a thinness of one two hund- dred and forty thousandth part of an inch, and to cover the expanse of the | dome about s2,OOO worth of it is ne cessary.
 To pay for the work of distributing this gold over the surface of the dome requires little more than another g 900, thus making the total cost of the mbelishment something less than one mill apiece were 1t divided up among the inhabitants of Boston pro- per.