[TheForge] Urine in smithing- was Flat black finish

[Saint Phlip]

On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 9:50 PM, Dave Smucker <davesmucker at hotmail.com>
wrote:

> This is an often repeated "tail" and may have some truth to it.  Mostly
> because urine contains salt and would reduce the formation of a stable
> steam layer -- resulting in a faster quench.    No idea on the red hair.
>
> Dave Smucker
> Brasstown, NC
>
>
​Well, I decided to look through my ebook of De Re Metallica​

​(free on line from Project Gutenburg, if anyone else wants a copy​) and
found 19 instances, using urine as an ingredient in various formulae.

Here we go:

Sal artificiosus[19] suitable for use in assaying ore is made in many ways.
By the first method, equal portions of argol, lees of vinegar, and urine,
are all boiled down together till turned into salt. The second method is
from equal portions of the ashes which wool-dyers use, of lime, of argol
purified, and of melted salt; one libra of each of these ingredients is
thrown into twenty librae of urine; then all are boiled down to one-third
and strained, and afterward there is added to what remains one libra and
four unciae of unmelted salt, eight pounds of lye being at the same time
poured into the pots, with litharge smeared around on the inside, and the
whole is boiled till the salt becomes thoroughly dry. The third method
follows. Unmelted salt, and iron which is eaten with rust, are put into a
vessel, and after urine has been poured in, it is covered with a lid and
put in a warm place for thirty days; then the iron is washed in the urine
and taken out, and the residue is boiled until it is turned into salt. In
the fourth method by which sal artificiosus is prepared, the lye made from
equal portions of lime and the ashes which wool-dyers use, together with
equal portions of salt, soap, white argol, and saltpetre, are boiled until
in the end the mixture evaporates and becomes salt. This salt is mixed with
the concentrates from washing, to melt them.

Next:

But the most powerful flux is one which has two drachmae of sulphur and as
much glass-galls, and half an uncia of each of the following,—stibium, salt
obtained from boiled urine, melted common salt, prepared saltpetre,
litharge, vitriol, argol, salt obtained from ashes of musk ivy, dried lees
of the aqua by which gold-workers separate gold from silver, alum reduced
by fire to powder, and one uncia of camphor[24] combined with sulphur and
ground into powder. A half or whole portion of this mixture, as the
necessity of the case requires, is mixed with one portion of the ore and
two portions of lead, and put in a scorifier; it is sprinkled with powder
of crushed Venetian glass, and when the mixture has been heated for an hour
and a half or two hours, a button will settle in the bottom of the
scorifier, and from it the lead is soon separated.

And again:

Or else take ore which has been ground to powder and sprinkle it in a
crucible, and then sprinkle over it an equal quantity of salt that has been
three or four times moistened with urine and dried; then, again and again
alternately, powdered ore and salt; next, after the crucible has been
covered with a lid and sealed, it is placed upon burning charcoal.

And this:

Others do not wash away the dirt with warm water, but with strong lye and
vinegar, for they pour these liquids into the pot, and also throw into it
the quicksilver mixed with the concentrates made by washing. Then they set
the pot in a warm place, and after twenty-four hours pour out the liquids
with the dirt, and separate the quicksilver from the gold in the manner
which I have described. Then they pour urine into a jar set in the ground,
and in the jar place a pot with holes in the bottom, and in the pot they
place the gold; then the lid is put on and cemented, and it is joined with
the jar; they afterward heat it till the pot glows red.

Yet more:

The eighth is made of two librae of vitriol, the same number of librae of
saltpetre, one and a half librae of alum, one libra of the lees of the aqua
which parts gold from silver; and to each separate libra a sixth of urine
is poured over it.

Lotsa uses for urine:

Afterwards take two earthen pots proved in the fire, of such size that the
gold can lie flat in them, and break a tile very small, or clay of the
furnace burned and red, weigh it, powdered, into two equal parts, and add
to it a third part salt for the same weight; which things being slightly
sprinkled with urine, are mixed together so that they may not adhere
together, but are scarcely wetted, and put a little of it upon a pot about
the breadth of the gold, then a piece of the gold itself, and again the
composition, and again the gold, which in the digestion is thus always
covered, that gold may not be in contact with gold; and thus fill the pot
to the top and cover it above with another pot, which you carefully lute
round with clay, mixed and beaten, and you place it over the fire, that it
may be dried.

And another:

Of this [Pg 460]kind are, all blackening, flying, penetrating, and burned
things; as is vitriol, sal-armoniac, flos aeris (copper oxide scales) and
the ancient fictile stone (earthen pots), and a very small quantity, or
nothing, of sulphur, and urine with like acute and penetrating things. All
these are impasted with urine and spread upon thin plates of that body
which you intend shall be examined by this way of probation. Then the said
plates must be laid upon a grate of iron included in an earthen vessel, yet
so as one touch not the other that the virtue of the fire may have free and
equal access to them. Thus the whole must be kept in fire in a strong
earthen vessel for the space of three days. But here great caution is
required that the plates may be kept but not melt."

This one is from an illustration of vats used purportedly to make borax,
yet a further note says that metalsmiths of the time were well aware of
borax, what it was, and where it came from:

Native as well as manufactured nitrum is mixed in vats with urine and
boiled in the same caldrons; the decoction is poured into vats in which are
copper wires, and, adhering to them, it hardens and becomes chrysocolla,
which the Moors call borax. Formerly nitrum was compounded with Cyprian
verdigris, and ground with Cyprian copper in Cyprian mortars, as Pliny
writes. Some chrysocolla is made of rock-alum and sal-ammoniac.[8]

Georgius Agricola. De Re Metallica, Translated from the First Latin Edition
of 1556

An there are a bunch more.


-- 
Saint Phlip

Only President Obama could double the stock market, cut the deficit by
2/3, bring
gas down under $3, get bin Laden, end 2 wars, bring unemployment down under
6%,  while fighting a government that is trying to destroy him, and still
be told he's failing as President.


Heat it up
Hit it hard
Repent as necessary.

Priorities:

It's the smith who makes the tools, not the tools which make the smith.

.I never wanted to see anybody die, but there are a few obituary notices I
have read with pleasure. -Clarence Darrow