Finishing touches - real gold!

The final tally of coats of varnish on the hull was 17!  11 coats of Epifanes PP Extra, and 6 coats of Epifanes Clear Gloss.  Not quite as many as we had wanted, but time was running out and we were having real problems with other people creating dust in the shed just as we were trying to put varnish top coats on - you would think that if you'd watched someone painstakingly prepare the wood for varnishing, hoover, wipe down and very carefully start to apply a coat of varnish, that you would think twice before switching on a dirty vacuum not 6 feet away - but no.  Apparently the rib (on a trailer) they were hoovering couldn't be wheeled outside the shed and cleaned there, in case it rained... 

Next time we might do it differently, and put Marelle in an individual tent the way they have the boats at Deacons.

Despite the problems Martin got a fantastic finish on the topsides.


To do this justice, we decided - well I decided and persuaded Martin! - to do the name on the transom, and the cove line, in real gold leaf rather than using vinyl tape or paint.  This was a new technique for us to learn, and we had the boatyard help us by carving out the name a bit deeper in the transom as it was only lightly scored before.

I did some research online, and ordered everything from Wrights of Lymm who were very helpful.  


I got the 24 carat extra thick gold leaf in transfer books (medium press), for easier application.  Ended up getting 5 books - having calculated I would need approximately 4, I panicked and ordered another 1 just in case, and now have a whole book left over :-)


As its going to be outside, I used oil based size - the 3 hour version of Le Franc Charbonelle.  I had two goes at getting the right colour of gesso - the base paint that goes underneath the size so if some leaf does come off it doesn't look so obvious.  The first one I ordered, yellow ochre, was quite dark, so I got some naples yellow and that was perfect.


Finally I got a couple of size 2 squirrel hair mops, and a 12mm ox hair brush, with a tin to keep it all in.  Oh and a very helpful book Practical Gilding - seeing as the people at the boatyard hadn't done this before either!  


A professional painter at the boatyard masked off the cove line and name with 3M fine line tape, and we lightly sanded the cove line and the name with 240 grit sandpaper.  We then painted on the gesso, and when it was dry, went over it with scotchbrite and then painted on the 3 hour size.  The Universal Metre Shed people actually used the mop to apply the size, and the ox hair brush to press the gold leaf, which I now realise is the wrong way round! but it seemed to work ok at the time.  They did the complicated bits, like the name and the shapes at the end of the cove line.


I spent a Saturday doing the cove lines themselves - I did not realise just how long this would take! - a good 7 hours in total, and a lot of concentration.  First I painted on the size - I managed to get pretty good coverage with this but in hindsight I would have tried to get just a bit more on, as there were a couple of areas that had tiny bits missed.  While this dried, I sat down with the transfer books and some scissors and talcum powder, and cut each sheet from 4 books into 3 strips roughly the size of the cove line, which left a thin strip over for patching up.  Each sheet is 80 x 80mm, and there are 25 sheets per book, so this took a while!   


Armed with the cut strips, and the ox hair brush, I carefully bent each strip to match the concave cove line, and applied each one by pressing lightly from the centre out, and then using the brush to apply pressure to finish off.  This went really well as long as I lined up the strip carefully to start with - the gold would stick straight away to any size it contacted, but the danger was the paper the gold was on could also stick to the size and stop the gold sticking, if the strip was moved slightly during application.  Fortunately this only happened in one tiny place but it was very frustrating as there was nothing I could do at the time to fix it.  I slightly overlapped each piece, and went over any missed patches with the thinner strips of gold leaf left over from cutting the 3 strips out of each sheet.


Finally I had finished one side, and then realised it would have been a better idea to have only put size on one side at a time, as I had been going 2 hours and was convinced the size on the second side was starting to get too dry.  Testing it, it seemed just about ok still, so I decided to go for it and speeded up on this side.  It was a relief to finish!

As soon as I had finished the second side, I checked over all of it and then took the masking tape off - I hate leaving masking tape on as I have had problems in the past with it taking off the surface it is attached to, and it would have been heartbreaking if it had damaged Martin's varnish.  Luckily it came off ok, pulling back on itself so the angle to the surface was small - but I am glad I took it off when I did as I could feel it starting to pull in places.


I am so pleased with the finished job.  I decided to leave the gold uncoated - some advice was to use size over the top, some to put on a coat of varnish, some to use lacquer - but I figured that I had gold leaf left over to fix any repairs needed during the year, and that any coating would dull the shininess of the gold which is the whole point of it!  All in all it hadn't been any more expensive than antifoul, and a lot more rewarding to apply.