GnuPG Newbie

[jason heddings]

I've been searching the lists and Google, but have not found the answer to
my question... I apologize if it is well-known.  I have a simple little app
that wraps the libgcrypt functions to provide a keygen, encrypt, & decrypt
functionallity.  I'm able to save my keys and use files with base64-encoded
S-expressions and things seem to be working well...  Now, on to my question:
 
What I'd like to do is save the key as a base64-encoded version of the bits.
The trouble I'm having is that I can't seem to figure out how to extract the
raw bits of the key from the gcry_sexp_t.  I can use the dump & print funcs
to see the MPI values, but I just can't seem to get at what I'm going for
here.
 
Is it reasonable to simply base64-encode the entire S-expression and use
that for key exchange?
 
Any help here would be greatly appreciated...  Although I'm familiar with
the key creation & encryption algorithms, I'm a bit of a newbie to public &
private key representations.
 
--jah