Kirin/Dragon horns

Not at the moment. We don’t have the time or man power to do that right now, but this project was something I thought would be a good thing to do. But fixing horns is very not only difficult…it is also nearly impossible! I tried to replace a few horns on some old pieces I had. When I tried to remove the old horn, the horn often broke off inside the head, leaving a piece of pewter that needed to be ground out with a dremel tool. This is tricky because you can damage the piece accidentally! I knocked the side off of a couple heads doing this, so it would be too nerve wracking to try to fix somebody else’s piece!
The other possible way to fix these would be to leave the chunk of broken horn in place, clip a new horn short, and glue it in on top of the old stem.. this would not endanger the piece as much but the new horn probably wouldn’t be as strong as the old one. We need to experiment with this approach.

I have had some success with removing horns with paint stripper, but it’s very tricky and you run the risk of ruining the paint if you get it anywhere but into the hole. Sometimes you get lucky and the horn comes out without a fight.

Only ones I’ve had come out reasonably easy has been the unicorns, and I still had to syringe in a fair amount of acetone to dissolve the glue first. Since I usually do repairs and rebuilding anyway, if I break it, I can fix it. So for me, pulling horns isn’t so bad, but not everyone has that kind of time. I do avoid the need for it whenever I can though.

Kyrin

If anyone can provide some info or suggestions, I’d sure appreciate it! 🙂

This topic should help you! http://www.windstoneeditions.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=6247

There are different kinds of gold leaf. Gold leaf, traditionally, is sheets of real genuine gold, pounded very flat and thin. You usually need to buy it by the ‘book’ which typically contains about 24 4″ x 4″ sheets of gold leaf. There are two main kinds; Patent gold leaf (which is stuck to a sheet of tissue paper) and loose, which is just a loose super thin piece of gold. Patent gold leaf if more expensive and I have seen it run from $60-80 per book, where loose is a bit less at around $50-70 per book depending on the karat and manufacturer. With patent gold leaf you do not need a guilding tip, which is essentially a very expensive little brush that allows you to lift gold leaf and handle it, since it is too thin to do with your fingers! But the patent is very very hard to leaf onto surfaces that are not flat.

This is an expensive thing to do and it’s really hard! I have done it quite a bit in the last several years and i still curse loudly and make a mess each time.

Here is a tutorial of sorts:

http://www.gildedplanet.com/howtogoldleaf.asp

These days they do make many imitation gold leaf substitutes. These are made with different alloys and can include copper and brass depending on the manufacturer. Sometimes they are called imitation, simulation, artificial, or composition gold leaf. These are much, much cheaper, but they WILL tarnish unless you seal them.