Hi Karla,
You can impress the gold while cold into a reticulated texture. Make
sure the gold is annealed to dead soft and press with a damp
crumpled up paper towel. A student in one of my workshops did a lot
of experimenting with this and found that he got better results with
thicker gold, .02 mm. When he tried with anything thinner the
reticulated ridges perforated the gold.
Burnish with something that will allow you to get into all areas of
the texture. You may have to make special burnishers. Also Tevel at
Allcraft, 800-645-7124, has some burnishers that might work for that
purpose.
Make sure you have a thick enough layer of fine silver on the
surface and that your metal is very clean. You don’t need a carbon
based solution for this process, which is diffusion bonding.
There are some very good posts in the Archives on Keum-boo. In one I
describe all the steps of the process. In another, Andrew Nyce
describes the metallurgy. He was my reticulation student, by the
way, and may have some good insights for you.
If you are interested in visiting Maine this spring I am teaching a
workshop on the Keum-boo process at Workshops at Wolf Designs, May
23 - 25th. (It should be warmer by then). Go
to<www.katewolfdesigns.com> for a course description.
Keum-boo on reticulated silver is beautiful. Good luck and enjoy the
process!
Jayne Redman