Shael,
Your gold leaf won’t work for Kumboo. It’s too thin. Gold leaf is
used in book binding, in illuminated lettering, covering various items
with gold, etc. It’s used litterally by glueing it on, however, not
by metallically fusing it. The techniques are not hard to learn, but
look it up first. It’s not a matter of smearing ordinary glue onto
something and covering with leaf…
With Kumboo, you’re heating the gold (which needs to be more a foil
thickness, than the extremely thin leaf) enough so that diffusion
bonding takes place when you burnish the leaf. No actual fusing.
It’s fairly low temp. but even so, it’s hot enough that metal ions
and oxygen, etc, are moving through and into the gold as part of the
process. and you do need the pressure of burnishing. Leaf is too
fragile to work well, as it tears too easily when you try to burnish.
And it’s so thin that some silver will quickly migrate through it,
making the color go quite pale in a surprisingly short time, if not
immediately. Try it if you like, but you may find it difficult, or
unpredictable, or almost impossible to work with for Kumbo. It’ll
blow away from the torch, it’ll stick to your burnisher instead, It’ll
tear when you try to apply or burnish it, and even if you get it to
work, the results likely will be less than satisfactory, unless you
modify your expectations to include whatever you end up getting (an
exploration process that’s quite valid in the art of making jewelry,
but somewhat less useful if trying to achieve a specific desired
result)
Another common use for gold leaf, by the way, is imbedding it in hot
glass. When the glass is stretched (like in blowing the bubble out in
glass blowing, for example), the leaf fractures into miriads of tiny
pieces. Looks great. Mixes nicely with dichroic glasses, is you’re
doing any of that sort of work.
Be aware, also, that not all gold leaf is gold leaf. Much of what is
sold is “imitation”, being actually just a bronze or some similar gold
color alloy, used instead. If it actually says, “pure gold”, or 23 K
gold, or the like, then it is. If it says nothing, check more
closely. also, most real gold leaf is sold in fairly small sizes,
like about 2 inch square pieces. If it’s one of the large 4 inch
square “books”, it’s much more likely to be the imitation. So too, if
it’s the type of leaf where the leaf is actually on a carrier sheet
by which you can pick up and handle and apply the leaf, rather than as
fragile loose featherlight leaves just placed between the pages of the
"book".
Hope this helps.
Peter Rowe