How would I go about coating a potato chip in silver or gold? Would it work? Electroplating?

Question

Would it be fragile or if it is possible to coat it, would it be durable?
Can I have different finishes on the coating?
Is there more than one step in the process - would i have to create a mould, pour a liquid metal into the mould and then plate it with silver/gold?
Is there an easier way?!

Answer 1

Gilding would definitely be the easiest, but if you dipped the chip in wax, you could cast it with relative ease (the wax would keep the chip from soaking up water from the investment for the mold). Also, where the chip is thin, you wouldn't need a lot of metal--with the proper facilities, you could cast the entire thing in silver. That would be so cool....

Answer 2

If you use gold or silver leaf, as some have suggested, your object (a potato chip? hahaha) would be so fragile it wouldn't last the hour. To give you an idea, medal leaf is thinner than a human hair. You can gild and gild and gild and get nothing of substance.

Have you ever seen gold plated aspen leaves? They are produced by literally dipping the leaf into the crucible of gold or silver. Produces a coating much thicker than gilding. They are fragile but are used as necklace pendents.
You're best bet is to talk to a someone at a serious jeweley supply store. They can give you more details and warnings.
Here's the site to our local supplier:
http://www.merchantcircle.com/business/Ackleys.Rocks.And.Stamps.2.719-633-1153

Anyway, here are the basics:

Coat your object with a thin layer of yellow ochre, it'll give it more substance. You may find better advice on the coating, it's been a long time since I've done this sort of thing. New materials may have come out.
Melt your metal of choice in a crucible and using a pair of wood tongs dip the object in and out of the metal. Immediatey and gently put the object into a pickling solution.
Wear protective clothing and goggles, it'll spit hot globs of everything, everywhere.

The other way is a vacuum mold process, this takes some special and expensive equipment. --another thing to discuss with your supplier.
Oh, I see someone suggested electroplating. Never did that but good suggestion!

Be careful and have FUN!
.

Answer 3

Hi:

Probably the way easiest workable method for this is to get some PMC - Precious Metal Clay. This substance can be thinned and painted on items like leaves, feathers or potatochips or other organic materials. Once the water has dried out of the PMC, it can be fired to create a metal piece. PMC can either be silver or gold. Check out PMC Supply or DelphiGlass for starter sets and to see some projects that will give you some ideas about how to do this. PMC is really a cool product, and you can fire it a bunch of different way including using a torch, or a small 'Hot Pot' or a jewelry or enamelling kiln. Once fired, the piece will be solid metal, about 25% smaller than original, and can be polished a few different ways such as with ball bearings in a tumbler or with a rotary type polishing buffer. I think you can also use real gold leaf (or gold PMC) over silver PMC if you want. I've worked with gilding, too, and by far, if you want a solid piece of metal, this is what I would recommend to get a durable piece.

Hope this helps.

Answer 4

You could turn it into solid gold or silver in a similar manner to lost wax casting, but you might have a lot of difficulty, because it is thin and has a lot of bubbles that could break open in the process and ruin the mold.

One good way to get a nice start would to use dental liquid rubber to make a mold of the chip, and then remove the chip and replace with jewelers wax, Before adding the wax it would be easy to find and remove the places where the material went into small holes.

You could then cast the wax, in silver or gold using standard lost wax casting process.

Answer 5

the guy who suggested gilding is correct, and 23 carat gold is mailable and workable enough to do the trick, except it is expensive...so use bronze leaf (composition gold) it runs about $5 a book of 25 leaves.(depending where you buy it)(art supply store like Coldsnow's, Utrecht, such as that), brush the salt off the chip,
spray a coat or two of lacquer or acrylic sealer (rattle can stuff) on the chip and let dry, size the chip with gold size (two coats) apply goldleaf and skew (brush onto the size thoroughly) with a small squirrel or goat hair brush. ( or a VERY soft and very clean like new sable). your gold size should be fast size (1-3 hr. stuff) and start checking tac after about 30 minutes...you may want to practice with some of those 25 leaves for a while, and get loose leaf not patent leaf

Answer 6

to gild an actual chip...first of all, you're going to have adhesion problems, even if the chip was of the 'baked' varietal. It will most definately be quite fragile.
(for electroplating to work, the material to be plated has to either have a coating that conducts or conducts on it's own...have you seen the process? they dunk it in a solution...voila, soggy chip)

I'd model a fake 'chip' using papier mache, or fibreglass and resin...seal it, prime it, then gild it with whatever metal you wanted to use. It'll be more durable, by far if you don't use a real chip.

Answer 7

For gold, you could use gold-leaf (very thin gold sheets), which you lay on an item, then get it to stick by brushing lightly with a soft brush. Look for articles on the net about it. You could then spray varnish it. It would be as fragile as the original potato chip.

Gold leaf is used for gilt picture frames etc. The process is called gilding (see wikipedia article link). I don't know whether a similar silver leaf exists.

Answer 8

go to a jewelry web site to ask theis one . you'll have to coat th piece wit varnish or some water proofing to electro plate. plating is the best way , there are companys that will do it for you.

Answer 9

Use gold leaf - learn about gilding

Answer 10

I remember seeing silver leaf somewhere, so yes, it does exist. :) However, if I were going to do this, I'd simply use spray paint.