The strength of solution necessary for gilding brass, copper, and silver is not very material. About one to two pounds of "gold" potassium cyanide (? 96 per cent KCN) per gallon does very well. The gold is best introduced by electrolysing from a large to a small gold electrode. One purchases a plate of pure gold either from the mint or from reliable metallurgists (say Messrs. Johnson and Matthey of London), and from this electrodes are cut.
The relative areas of the electrodes do not really much matter. I have used an anode of four times the area of the cathode. The solution is preferably heated to a temperature of about 50° C., and a strong current is sent through it, say twenty amperes to the square foot of anode. The electrodes must be suspended below the surface of the solution by means of platinum wires. If the gold plates are only partly immersed, they dissolve much more rapidly where they cut the surface, possibly on account of the effect of convection currents, though so far as the writer is aware no proper explanation has yet been given.
After a time gold begins to be deposited on the cathode in a powdery form, for which reason it is a good plan to begin by wrapping the latter in filter paper. The process has gone on for a sufficient time when a clean bit of platinum foil immersed in the place of the cathode becomes properly gilt at a current density of about ten amperes per square foot.
The powdery gold deposited on the cathode while preparing the solution can be scraped off and melted for further use, or the whole cathode may now be used as an anode. The platinum foil testing cathode may also be "stripped" by making it an anode, and is for this reason preferable to German silver or copper, which would contaminate the solution while the "stripping" process was in progress.
For general purposes a current density of say ten to fifteen amperes per square foot may be used, but this may be considerably varied, so long as the upper limit is not greatly overpassed. During gold-plating there is a considerable advantage in keeping the electrodes moving or the solution stirred.
After immersing the cleaned and scratch-brushed articles, depositing may go on for about three minutes, after which they are removed from the bath and examined, in order to detect any want of uniformity in the deposit.
The articles should be entirely immersed; if this is not done, irregularity is apt to appear at the surface. Platinum wires employed as suspenders, and coated along with the articles to be gilt, may also be cleaned without loss by making them anodes. If, on examination, all is found to be going on well, reimmerse the cathodes, and continue plating till they appear of a dull yellowish brown (this will occur in about four minutes), then remove them, rinse and scratch-brush them, and replace them in the bath.
When a second coat appears to be getting rather brown than yellowish brown, i.e. of the colour of wet wash-leather, the removal, followed by scratch-brushing, may be repeated, and for nearly all laboratory purposes, the articles are now fully gilt.
The coating of gold deposited from a hot cyanide solution is spongy in the extreme, and if the maximum wear-resisting effect is to be obtained, it is advisable to burnish the gold rather than to rely upon the scratch brush alone.