PenBBS Year of Pig, Modification
So….. last month, I saw PenBBS released a year of the pig edition model 471 … the material seem nothing special (just white, ivory plastic) but the engraving somewhat caught my attention.
They have a pretty cute looking pig engraved on the barrel, being an immigrated Chinese and all, I figured it would be a decent Chinese New Year gift for my mother. So I placed an order of two of these pens.
Three weeks later, the package from China Arrived. The content is safe and sound…. and pen… well… urmm… there is one problem.
This is how the pen looks like in person.
Yup… the laser engraving, doesn’t really show up in person. I was half expecting the engraving is going to be not too pronounce, but this is barely legible.
I really don’t think giving out something and say “Trust me mom, there is a pig engraved on it” would be such a good idea… then the idea of gilding came into mind.
You see, I just recently repaired a chipped lid on my tea pot, and due to that, i have some extra/left over gold leaf left in my possession. so, I might as well put them to good use.
The concept of gilding is simple. Apply the glue to where you want the foil to stick. Let the glue (sizing) dry, then apply the gold leaf/foil and rub off/break off the extra.
The challenge here is that I need to only apply sizing (glue) in the engraved area, mainly due to the sizing it self typically doesn’t dry as it remains tacky for an extended period of time and becomes a mess to clean up if I do not wish to wash off the rest of my gold leaf with them.
So I got to work.
In the end, a combination of a moist fine grade standing stick and manually removing excess glue using a plastic pick got me the result I wanted. Had to redo this one time due to me being too aggressive with the sanding stick or the sanding stick was too wet and ended up removing the gold leaf in the engraving.
To keep the gold leaf locked in and withstand normal usage and wear, I decided to air brush some clear paint over it. After probably 6-7 coats of clear paints. This is the final result.
