Kerl, Bruno: Metallurgische Probirkunst. Leipzig, 1866.

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solar_plasma

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Feb 27, 2013
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I tried to translate some technical terms like inquartation, which I only knew in english and look what I've found:

Kerl, Bruno: Metallurgische Probirkunst. Leipzig, 1866.
http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/book/view/kerl_metallurgische_1866?p=340

Since many of you guys understand german language, I thought I should share my discovery. It is fulltext and downloadable.

Btw. if anybody knows legally downloadable metallurgical books in danish, swedish or norwegian, please share the links, too.
 
c) die Glüheprobe. Eine breit gehämmerte oder aus-
gewalzte Probe der Legirung wird auf einem Ansiedescherben
unter der Muffel bei niedriger Temperatur ein wenig geglüht.
Die Farbe bei 1000 Feingehalt ist alsdann mattweiss, bei 950
gleichförmig graulichweiss, bei 900 mattgraulichweiss mit schwar-
zen Streifen an den Rändern, bei 880 fast grauschwarz, desgl.
bei 860, bei 840 und darunter gänzlich schwarz.

It says:

when you are glowing silver, the colour will tell about its purity:

1000 faint white
950 homogenious greyish white
900 faint greyish white with black stripe at the edges
880 almost grey-black
under 840 completely black


I am pretty sure, that depends a lot on the alloyed metals. What do the experts say? Is it something still usefull?
 
There are really some gold nuggets of information in that book. Amazing how knowledged old masters like this professor in mining and metallurgy already have been 150 years ago! I need to read it some more times to understand how it fits into what we already know, but then I think I'll try to translate some passages that would add good information to the forum or would be a nice basis for discussions.

Already that time they assayed precisely as 0,5/1000! They knew exactly under which conditions they had to wash/boil how many times to achieve the needed purity. Under which conditions how much platinum will codissolve with silver and so on.
 
Thanks Bjorn

That looks like a good read.I agree with you in that it's amazing how accurate some of these old school refiners could be without the technology that we have available now.

Jon
 
It is indeed impressive. Some of the old literature is the best literature.
Lot of really intelligent people, those old scientists of yore.

Can you translate the whole doc?
 
Those are 400 pages, it is written in an ancient way and what is the biggest problem, it is full of special terminology. I would be able to translate some passages that handle about the wet methods. But I have almost no clue about hot assaying, cupeling, treatment of ores and so on.

For example, what does it mean, when he says, when there is copper in the gold and silver alloy, it is needed to be driven off by lead? I have no idea.
 
solar_plasma said:
For example, what does it mean, when he says, when there is copper in the gold and silver alloy, it is needed to be driven off by lead? I have no idea.
In cupellation the lead will get rid of the copper and other base metals leaving you gold and silver. Basically it say, if you have copper, use lead to get rid of it?
 
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