Gold leafing, continued

All the gold leafing is now done, and the decoration is complete except for the Flemish papers, which haven't shown up yet.

Here's the case, with gold bands:



I've also attached the endblocks to the keyboards, like so:




With the endblocks on, I could do the final fitting of the keyboards inside the case, where they sit very snugly.



Next up is register construction. The registers are made out of two pieces of wood, with slots in one piece cut on the table saw and a veneer cut from the same piece. The registers guide the jacks up and down on the keyboard.



Then I glued the veneer on and set it to dry:

Gold leafing

The decoration phase is finally, gradually, coming to a close. The painting is all done, the gilding is mostly done, and the Flemish papers are on order.

Here's the front flap, masked for painting the internal color:



And here's the lid, flap, and fallboard, all with painting complete.



Next up is the gold leaf application. Gold leaf comes in rolls, about a half-inch wide and 200 inches long, which amounts to about a tenth of an ounce of gold. It's tricky stuff to work with, because it's so thin and light the slightest breath of breeze causes it to flutter away.

Here's the case with gilded moldings:




And the lids, with gold striping:



And the first part of the case striping, on the tail: