On 30 May 2007 at 22:29, Marvin Johnston wrote:
The method *I* want to try someday is to use mercury
to disolve the
gold, and then boil off the mercury leaving the gold (I would guess as
a powder.) And yes, I do know the dangers of using this method.
Before modern electroplating, that's how silver and gold were plated
onto base metal such as brass and copper. Apply an amalgam of the
metal you'd like to plate, then heat the object to boil off the
mercury.
I've got a book on early Baroque trumpet building that mentions that
the job of applying plating seemsed to belong to workers with
unusually short lives.
Cheers,
Chuck