January 11 (part 3): All the gold leaf that covers temples and Buddha statues in Burma has to come from somewhere, and today we saw how it's made: by hammering an initial small lump of gold between sheets of parchment in successive stages until it becomes just a few microns thick. Each stage (there are four, if I remember correctly) takes about 30 minutes of steady hammering, and reduces the thickness by about a factor of 10.
Click photos to enlarge them.
The hammering
The final result: a book of 100 sheets
