I've watched this thread with interest, though I've let Koopa do most of the crusading on it for me. My main PC, Corvin, is a good enough Smith to tinker at Gilding. He's currently at level 2 as a gilder. Might be 3, I've forgotten. My purposes getting into the entire crafting aspect of smithing / gilding was mostly to be able to rearm my own own PC, in the likely chance he gets his shiny steel & silver sword disarmed or taken on death by, OH, I don't know, say, NEGNAR.
(Seriously, a werewolf dashing up and disarming and running away really cracked me up, I loved it)
From my perspective, silver gilding should be plenty damn hard. And it is. I don't much mind that my PC can't advance easily at it. Corvin was originally a farmer, he may have become good at slinging a hammer, but he's really not that smart. Mastering the process of acid etching and gilding silver should be pretty much beyond him. I can still turn around and hammer out some nice weapons and armor.
That said, I would try to master gilding more, at least to the point of being able to rearm myself with about a decent success rate. The cost doesn't phase me, the process of selling silver weapons off would provide money for it, and its not terribly hard to get hold of fang anyway. But the silver! The idea of making that many trips to the Wagner Silver Mine, or even down below Dvergeheim... I'd rather just not master it, and instead just spend more time RPing, goofing around, and being target practice for various evil-doers. Hours of ore-carting just doesn't appeal to me. (not even considering the encumbrance problem of ore these days... I really want to contract a druid to turn into a pack-bear for ore carting)
Oh, here's a thing, mildly unrelated, that I thought would be nice. Gilding armor, with say, silver or gold, to produce something like "Silver-etched Steel Plate" or "Gold-etched Steel Plate" Even platinum, though I'm not sure of the viability of the metal for such a process. Toss on a minor influence bonus or some such on the armor. Or something like that. Just an idea.