Gold Wound Badge II for Opinions

[Ron P]

For all you know, it could be actual gold plating. Any jeweler could make that determination. Wouldn't that be cool! Ron.

[kriztof]

The finish, whatever it might be, looks good and well applied. I like this badge personally. If you can live with the reversed catch, keep it, it makes it different from the rest, dare I say, a variant

Chris

[Don D.]

"Is fire-gilding something that is still commonly done?"

Not in modern countries with environmental standards. Use of mercury has been banned in most of these. I'm sure you can find it in third world countries though.

[Brad Posey]

Having done a little work with silver and gold myself I can ony imagine that fire gilding is not very easy, and like any other handcraft, takes years to master. Electro-plating would be the easiest and prefered method today, but I do not know if it can be done to iron or steel since the object must first be plated with Nickle.

As Don says it is probably done in Third World countries and maybe by artisans desiring to re-create ancient and medieval jewelry, but I would think it would be expensive to get someone to do that sort of work.

I just read a little on Wiki about gilding and if you scroll down to the process known as "Wet Gilding" you can see that it is suitable for iron or steel.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilding



Brad


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[streptile]

Hi Brad,

Well, I finally got 'round to reading the link you provided. Interesting stuff.

I really like this badge, and have decided to keep it. Who knows? Maybe some more information will surface about the period wear of this type.

I thank you all for your valued input here.



Do you guys think I should "fix" the pin? Remove it and flip it.