Metallic leaf experience?

[Jamie Buxton]

I've been experimenting with metallic leaf as accents on wood furniture. (Metallic leaf is like gold leaf, except that it is made from other metals.)
To clearcoat it, I tried my usual sprayed waterborne varnish (Emtech). I figured I'd varnish the wood and the metal at the same time. However, the varnish doesn't flow out properly on the metal, and doesn't bond to it. My suspicion is that the leaf has some sort of wax or oil left on it from the manufacturing process. All the articles and books I've read solve the problem by clearcoating with solvent-based varnish or lacquer. I don't really want to spray solvent-based finishes. Has anybody encountered this problem and found a solution?

[Mike Cutler]

Jamie. Per Swenson had a post on this subject not long ago, with an example of some metalleaf work he did. Here is the link.

www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=21364

[Per Swenson]

Thank you Mike,

Jamie, Everybody,

I forgot to mention, you do not clearcoat real gold leaf.

Another huge bonus.

Per

[Jamie Buxton]

As I understand it, you don't need to clearcoat gold if it won't be touched. However, it is so thin that touching it much will wear through it. I want to be able to use leaf on surfaces which may be used as door pulls or drawer pulls, so I'd pretty much have to clearcoat gold too. Furthermore, real gold leaf only comes gold color. Metallic leafs come from manufacturers in a much larger color range, and can be patina-ed too (for instance, see some of David Marks' stuff).