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We are presently analyzing a small collection of artifacts excavated at the site of Ft. La Presentacion on the St. Lawrence River in Ogdensburg, N.Y. A number of the items appear to have been in the process of being gilded, apparently by a smith stationed there with the British troops that occupied the site after the French had left. The items include a number of straight pins, a tinkler cone such as those used on clothing by native Americans, and some fragments of uniform insignia, but also include a number of items unlikely to have been intentionally gilded such as ordinary nails, scraps of copper and a previously broken iron scabbard frog. To me this suggests the process was a messy one involving vapors that gilded items in near proximity to the ones being purposely gilded. Am I correct in assuming that this process was hot-gilding by the evaporation of mercury from a gold amalgam? Are there other processes that might have been used? Marty Pickands New York State Museum