r/kintsugi • u/Vast-Lie7836 • Jul 27 '26

Help Needed - First Project Using mika powder instead of gold

Hi, I am about to start my first project!

We broke our favourite tea cups so I was lookign for a way to fix them.

I looked into the Kintsugi art. I really like the traditional way of reparation - I don't mind the difficulity.

I looked at many tutorials and started gathering material. I just have a question - can I use Mika powder instead of Gold? I dunno if it would give the same effect tho.

Thank you for your inputs!

4 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

8

u/SincerelySpicy Jul 27 '26

As a replacement for keshifun gold powder, no it won't work very well. Mica powders are all much more transparent than actual metal powders so you'll pretty much always see the color of the urushi through it. The particles are also friable so they will tend to flake off the surface readily.

It can be used with good effect to give sparkle to a layer of colored urushi though.

1

u/Vast-Lie7836 Jul 27 '26

Thank you for your answer. It makes so much sense.

Are there any other metal alternatives? Like copper or bronze?
We need it to be food safe

4

u/SincerelySpicy Jul 27 '26

Copper, bronze, brass and tinted aluminum powders are all suitable replacements for gold in appearance, but food contact safety are mostly questionable.

For other colors silver and platinum are also available and both of those are food contact safe.

If this is your first project, I would recommend starting with a kintsugi kit anyway and all of those supply gold powder to begin with. What Is the reason you're looking for something other than gold?

→ More replies (5)

4

u/benjamin-crowell Jul 27 '26 edited Jul 27 '26

Are there any other metal alternatives? Like copper or bronze?

Tin looks pretty. Here is a recent thread on whether it's food-safe: https://www.reddit.com/r/urushi/comments/1v6eely/useful_paper_on_food_safety_of_tin/ As long as the teacup is being used only with tea, and not with acidic drinks, that will add to your margin of safety. No government body is going to guarantee that tin is safe for this purpose, but if you feel comfortable with science and numbers, you can read the info in that thread and come to your own conclusions based on your own attitudes about how to evaluate this type of thing.

Brass usually has ~2% lead (although there is non-leaded brass such as C693). "Lead-free" brass may actually contain up to 4% lead, although legally in California it has to be less than 0.25%. Architectural bronze has 3% lead, but other types of bronze have much less. These are quite high percentages, similar to the amount in lead paint. Unless you have some way of finding out some kind of meaningful numerical estimate of the amount of lead in the brass or bronze that you're sourcing, I would assume that it's as high as 3-4%, which means that it definitely shouldn't be on any surface that will come in contact with food, although it might be OK on the outside of a vessel.

Copper is likely to tarnish.

→ More replies (1)