Dear List members,
I am a metal smith, and have reproduced 17th and 18th century copper
cookware for some ten years. I have good solid documtation from Fuller
for English cookware. But the using of brass to braze the joints has
long bothered me, in that it is quite labor intensive and runs the risk
of rendering the pot useless. It approaches art more than science on
some days.
I have long wondered if the early copper workers really went to this
kind of effort.
This past winter I did some experiments using zinc in the joint and
letting it devolve some of the copper and become brass at the joint.
This worked vary well and required much lower temperatures to
accomplish.
Benvenuto Cellini, in his Treatise on Goldsmithing attributes this type
of surface work to the Romans.
Fuller clearly refers to filed brass for his spelter, But in Hoover's
translation of De Re Metallica refers to spelter as being zinc that was
imported from Asia.
Now the questions:
Has any one worked on this?
Does any one know when the term spelter changed meaning from zinc to
brass?
Is there a way to tell the difference between using brass for the joint
and using zinc and letting it alloy in the joint.
I can not see a difference between the two methods.
My thanks for your time
T.W. Moran
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