[TheForge] Urine in smithing- was Flat black finish

Tue May 3 09:25:55 EDT 2016

The use of urine is also mentioned in "On Diverse Art" by Theophilus,

On Mon, May 2, 2016 at 10:21 PM, Saint Phlip <saintphlip at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
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