I can suggest a less imperfect method of procedure. Where there are thin lines or figures such as circles to join, the amateur can do this with home made tools.

Such tools may be made of small brass wire, some straight edges and others curved like gouges.

(*) He should also have small dots of various sizes, circular or oval in profile. With these simple elements, most line designs may be patched. The ground properly prepared, the warm iron tool to, be used is applied upon fragments of gold leaf. The iron should be a little hotter than boiling water; otherwise it will not fix the gold in place. If too hot, it will burn the leather. Gilders test the heat of an iron by touching it with a wet finger, and are able to tell, by the sizzle and amount of vapor given off, whether the degree of heat is right. A more simple method, for the amateur, is to try the iron on a fragment of leather.

(*) The excess of gold not pressed in by the iron may be wiped off with a fragment of woolen cloth.

(*) All set, of course, in wooden or pottery handles. Wooden handles for such tools, or the tools themselves, may be procured at moderate prices horn dealers in bookbinders' materials. M. S. B.

(*) The impression should first be made on the leather by the hot tool, without gold, and painted with glaire. When the glaire is nearly dry, a fragment of gold-leaf is picked up on a pad of cotton wool slightly touched with cocoanut oil and pressed down on the blind impression of the tool. The tool is then pressed into its former impression, setting the gold. The process is very delicate; the tool must be perfectly clean and the gold-leaf, which is very difficult to handle, worked from a padded cloth dusted with brick dust, or a similar substance, to prevent the leaf from adhering there while it is being cut to the proper size. M. S. B.

If it is necessary to restore a complicated ornament upon an ancient and very precious binding, special irons must be cut, using the tooling still in place as a guide.

With patience and skill, one may fashion these for himself. The required ornamentation is traced from another spot where it is still intact on the binding, with a brush holding resin varnish or wax. This tracing, which naturally leaves an imprint in reverse, is applied to a piece of copper, and the design retouched on the copper with the same varnish or wax.

(*) The other faces of the cube or cylinder of copper used are crated, and the copper placed in a bath of azotic acid. The acid will eat the metal not protected as above, leaving the ornament standing out in relief something after the manner of a stereotype plate. Or, the electro-chemical procedure of stereotyping may be used to the same end.

(*) Wax would, of course, be used hot. M. S. B.

< Repairing Old Bindings Part 8