Getting Rougher With Dutch Guilding

Sometimes your experiments do not prove your hypothesis. This is one of those. You have to remind yourself that it didn't "fail" it just returned unexpected results.

After trying to draw solid lines with resin and getting no adhesion from the Dutch Guilding (UNAOIWN Gold foil GF01 AU) I just went medieval on it and put down blobs of resin. Then I dragged out one of those blobs into thin lines with the probe. The foil was then laid down, pressed with a lightly compressed tissue, placed under a sheet of paper, and burnished with a chromed rod. 

Burnishing was used as the foil has a very dimpled texture and there was no other readily apparent way to ensure good contact with the resin on the slide. That should fix it.

After plentiful exposure to UV from underneath, the slide was rubbed first with a brush, then a cotton bud. Much foil randomly adhered to the slide. I rubbed much harder. The slide was then examined under the microscope:

 

As can be seen, adhesion by the foil to the resin is more or less random (the circular structure is part of the slide support). There was very little correlation between any of the resin blobs and the locations of patches of foil, some appearing stuck down with optimism and stubbornness on areas that had not acquired resin.

As well as being dimpled, the material appeared to fracture easily into straight-edged flakes with a distinct grain, in a way that real gold foil does not. 

So, not much of immediate use here. But I do have plenty of guilding for Christmas decorations. Might try using the probe to machine the foil later, so I'll hang on to a few sheets.

Real gold foil may be obtained later, and I suspect that will behave somewhat differently.