Bookbinding - Making a Sprinkled Gold Book Edge

I may be giving away one of my signature approaches here, but adding sprinkled gold leaf to decorated book edges is a favourite approach of mine. It's relatively simple to do and the effect can be stunning. It can be done on the head, tail and fore edge, though the burnishing on a rounded fore edge is a little more fiddly. The edge has been sanded to a very smooth finish and sized with a weak paste/water mix. Once dry it was decorated with acrylic ink and is now ready for the gold leaf. . .

[@Nanakinsz]

What a wonderful adornment! Your simple steps to this stunning finish should make this required watching! Thank you!

[@sabrinab2807]

Thank you Glen, Great video, you really see the effect when the light catches the gold.

[@the01condor]

Thank you for sharing this tecnique

[@maryb2431]

That's just lovely, thanks for posting!

[@munnaza23]

Amazing

[@maryamabdulla179]

Hi Glenn. Thank you so much for all the videos you make! I learn so much. Could you make a video on how to gild with gold on a rounded foredge? I am not able to find any sources on this topic. Thank you in advance for reading this

[@bookbindingtips]

Hi - glad you find my videos helpful! Solid edge gilding is not something I often do so I am not practiced enough to make a decent video on this I'm afraid. But making a sprinkled gold edge on the rounded fore edge of a book is the same process as in this video - the only difference being that, when sanding, I hold the Abranet around a tube or dowel which is very slightly more curved than the fore edge. I then just sand in the same way as with the flat edges until extremely smooth. The adhesive and gold leaf is then applied in the same way as shown. Hope that helps!

[@maryamabdulla179]

@@bookbindingtips Thank you so much for your response, very much appreciated! Will try making a sprinkled foredge to start with using your method! Have a lovely day :D

[@toshirok4481]

Τhank you! So nice!

[@hancock1066]

Beautiful! I love the look of the sprinkled gold edge. One question. Why do you sprinkle the weak adhesive on the edge, rather than brushing the adhesive over the entire edge? I have seen DAS do this same technique and he puts the adhesive over the entire edge rather than doing the sprinkling. Do you lose more gold by sprinkling? Is there an advantage to sprinkling the adhesive? Thanks. I love your videos. They are very informative.

[@bookbindingtips]

Hi David, I find that by sprinkling the adhesive I get a more even effect. If the glue is brushed all over then there is a risk you may get larger clumps of gold adhering to the edge, and I'm not sure that I want the areas in between the gold to have a coating of PVA. But then there is always more than one way to do things . . .😊

[@sammi7548]

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