Agate burnishers

Hi, Need help ,on do I buy some agate burnishers or not. I am just
started to do gold foil on sterling silver, and someone told me that
an agate. I would also like to know if I can use fine silver
instead of sterling? All the help will be appreciated. Thanks, Jill

Andrew and Jill Morrison
2197 N. Allen Avenue
Altadena, California 91001

ph (626)798-6588
FAX (626)791-0263
e’mail @A_J_Morrison

Hi Jill,

It sounds like you may be starting to do Kum-Bo. One advantage of an
agate burnisher over steel or some other metal is heating. A stone
burnisher doesn’t absorb heat as fast as a steel or other metal
burnisher. Hence the probability of the gold sticking to the burnisher
is reduced. If it were me, I’d go for the stone burnisher.

Dave

Hi, there, Andrew and Jill-

You can burnish gold onto silver without an agate burnisher- the
standard steel ones work just fine. Just keep a bowl of water nearby
to dip your steel burnisher in periodically. The idea is to not let
your burnisher get so hot that you adhere the foil to the burnisher
instead of the silver. You should be able to use fine silver instead
of sterling with no problem- I was taught to depletion gild the
sterling first, as the foil adheres better to fine silver.

HTH,

Lee Einer

Hello Jill -

In the archives, Oct. '99 happened to have several strings of info on
Keum-boo or Kumboo. You might enjoy doing a subject search for that
particular month in the archives. There are so many different
spellings for kum-boo that it sometimes makes searching difficult!
When you are in the archives - 1) click on “search” 2) click on “meta
index” 3) scroll down and click on Oct '99 subject 4) go to subject
pages #3 & 4. (I always have to remember that there is more than one
page to browse of the subject headers - when doing a general search
for info.)

Charles Lewton-Brain has an article in the Tips section:

Have fun exploring.
Cynthia

I have burnished with a tumbled agate before. It cheaper than buying
one, at least the ones that I saw in the Rio catalog a few years ago.

Marilyn Smith