Collaboration
ART
BEAUTY & WELLNESS
CRAFT
CULTURE & HISTORY
ENTERTAINMENT
ENVIRONMENT
FOOD & DRINKS
REVERSE ENGINEERING
SCIENCES
SPORTS
TECHNOLOGY
WEARABLES
Crucibles of White Clay and Ground Old Crucibles for Melting Gold and Silver (Theophilus, 12th Century)
The goldsmith's crucible from Theophilus's De Diversis Artibus (12th century): finely ground white clay mixed with ground fragments of old crucibles (or of white pots that survive heating to a glow), two parts to a fourth part, beaten with warm water and formed into crucibles large and small.
Beginner
About 1 day plus drying
Instructions
1
1
Mix proportions
Mix proportions
Loading Jupyter Notebook...
2
2
Read De Diversis Artibus, Book III
Read De Diversis Artibus, Book III
"Take white clay and grind it very fine, and old vases, in which gold or silver has been before melted."
3
3
Prepare the clay and grog
Prepare the clay and grog
Grind white clay very fine. Break up old crucibles in which gold or silver has been melted and grind them separately; if you have none, heat baked fragments of white earthen pots until they glow, and if they do not crack let them cool and grind them.
Materials for this step:
Kaolin Clay1 piece
Broken Pottery Shards1 pieceTools needed:
Mortar and Pestle
Forge
Hammer4
4
Mix and form
Mix and form
Take two parts of the ground clay and a fourth part of the burnt fragments (a third in the Wolfenbuttel manuscript), mix with warm water, beat it strongly, and form crucibles large and small.
Tools needed:
20-Liter Bucket
Wooden Mallet5
5
Dry
Dry
Let the crucibles dry; meanwhile weigh out the gold or silver to be worked.
6
6
Troubleshooting
Troubleshooting
Crucible troubleshooting.
Flow
Loading...
7
7
History and honest limits
History and honest limits
From Theophilus, **De Diversis Artibus**, Book III, chapter XXII, translated by Robert Hendrie (1847) (checked on the archive.org scan essayuponvarious00hend, p. 227). He gives no sizes and no firing; kaolin for his white clay, the tools and the diagram are ours.
Materials
2- 1 piecePlaceholder
- 1 piecePlaceholder
This blueprint makes
Related Blueprints
These blueprints share knowledge with this one — techniques, materials, or principles that connect them in the learning graph.
CC0 Public Domain
This blueprint is released under CC0. You are free to copy, modify, distribute, and use this work for any purpose, without asking permission.
Support the Maker by purchasing products through their Blueprint where they earn a Maker Commission set by Vendors, or create a new iteration of this Blueprint and include it as a connection in your own Blueprint to share revenue.