Question for any lurking blacksmiths.
How difficult would it be to create gold leaf with medieval tools and skills?
Particularly, how would they go about avoid it welding itself onto the tools used to process it? Iirc gold leaf was notoriously "sticky" in how it wants to weld to other metals without much pressure needed. Or was that only an issue when it was in contact with another gold leaf, and not something problematic for the iron/steel of hammers or the anvil it's resting on?
A blacksmith wouldn't make gold leaf, period...
Gold doesn't "weld" to metal. You wouldn't be able to work it if it did.. At the thinness of gold leaf it does become extremely sensitive to static electricity, which does make it stick to a lot of stuff.
When gilding with it, you're actually rubbing it into the ( at that scale ) extremely rough surface of the object you're gilding, making use of the static efect, and all the bumps and grooves of the surface.
Which is where the
highly polished bone/ivory tools and soft cloths come in.
And while there's several techniques in making the stuff, the oldest that's known is with saturated mercury.
Mercury dissolves gold, and you can roll/wash gold-saturated mercury over a flat polished surface to deposit a layer of gold, which when thick enough becomes gold leaf.
( and no, for f*cks sake,
don't try that one at home, or at least in the open air with the wind in your back... Mercury fumes are dangerous, debilitating (mentally and physically), and ultimately lethal, m'kayyy...)
You can easily spot the civilisations that knew the trick.. They all have records in some form a Divine/Magical metal, and stories of whole palaces covered in gold.. Plus the odd emperor that got insane because of it, or wanted to be buried with/in it
It's kinda funny how it took us a bit to work up to copper and bronze, but peeps already knew how to muck around with gold and mercury in the late stone age.
But when it comes to the story here, and the kid immediately jumping to
galvanised steel....
Honestly.. Steel.... difficult enough to make as it is with primitive methods, even if you know exactly what you're doing.
Galvanising it requires acid baths and electrolysis. Or something hot enough to
vapourise tin , and acid baths...
There's a damn big difference between knowing
of something, and actually making it...
And this is really taking the piss...