My expertise is on iron rather than copper or brass. My understanding is that the use of rolling in wiremaking goes back to John Purnell's patent of 1766. Brass wire was made before that at Bristol by the Bristol brass wire company.
Iron wire was made at Tintern from about 1567. The process involved forging rods, using straining hammers, which seem to have been tilt hammers, before the product was drawn using drawplates. This was technology introduced from Germany, probably Nuremburg.
Slitting mills producing rods for nailmaking were invented in the Liege region about 1580 and introduced to England in 1590 (Dartford in Kent). That on Cannock Chase in Staffordshire existed by 1611, followed by Hyde Mill in Kinver (also Staffs) in 1627 and then various others. I am not aware of them being used to provide wire rods, but I may be wrong.
It set this out to provide a historical framework. I am not qualified to say what marks the various processes would leave in the metal.
Peter King
On 30 December 2021 at 06:09 Dawn Hoffmann <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hello,For what it is worth, you might be interested in this image: https://www.nuernberger-hausbuecher.de/75-Amb-2-317-40-vI have read somewhere that rolling mills in the 16th c were for finishing already formed sheets of metal to smooth it out (surfacing only) because the pressure needed for the reduction of material was not sufficient (that part of technology still needed tweaking..). (I am not sure if I wrote notes on where I read that.) Rolling mills for reduction were not in much use until 18th c. as far as I know. There was some use of rolling mills in the Renaissance, but not widespread use. I am still looking for more history of these processes too. Rolling of flat sheet and wire are often on the same rollers with "v" grooves in the rollers. But for true corners you need a drawplate (and lots of annealing!).I do not know if this is what you need to know..SIncerely,Dawnps. sorry to say - stay away from cheap drawplates - you waste a lot of time and effort on badly made tools..Dear David:
My first guess is that it was made in a slitting mill. There was one in operation at Tintern in England in 1567 but that may have been a copy of an earlier one in Belgium. The surface markings and the flash at the edges suggest shearing, not rolling. It certainly was not drawn and the sharp edges suggest that it was not passed through grooved rollers.
Thanks for your family news. I have to report that Carol has a case of Alzheimer's and is in a care home. My mobility isn't what I'd like it to be. You may have seen my latest paper, in the current Historical Metallurgy. I have one in review in Arms & Armour on welded cannon made by additive assembly of discs welded together in a hydraulic press in 1845. To my surprise the complex processed worked and the cannon proved far superior to cast ones.
Best wishes,
Bob
On 12/29/2021 12:19 PM, Killick, David J - (killick) wrote:Thanks very much to Tobias Skowronek for replying to my earlier query about chemical and lead isotopic data for metals in Portuguese and other shipwrecks. I highly recommend his PhD thesis (2021) on this topic.
I have a related query. There is a rich cemetery in the Zambezi valley – on the border between Zambia and Zimbabwe – called Ingombe Ilede, excavated in 1960 and 1961, and published in 1969 by Brain Fagan. The graves contain ivory, gold, X-shaped copper ingots, lots of Indian glass beads, cloth (preserved by contact with the copper), iron wire-drawing plates, and lots of copper and bronze wire in various gauges. The older radiocarbon dates are a mess, but two new dates on cloth both calibrate (using the SHCAL 20 curve) to the interval 1470 to 1640 AD at 95% probability. Prior to 1531, when the Portuguese founded their first trading post in the Zambezi valley, all imports from outside the continent were from India, China and the Islamic world, carried into the African interior by Swahili merchants from their ports in present Kenya and Tanzania. Thereafter, imports could be from these sources, or could be European.
We are trying to decide whether the cemetery at Ingombe Ilede falls before or after 1531. Jay Stephens has done lead isotopes and chemistry on 15 pieces. Two copper crosses are from the Kipushi mine in Katanga, about 500 km away, but the non-radiogenic lead isotope ratios obtained for the bronze wire are difficult to interpret, being compatible with Africa, European, Near Eastern and Indian sources. Close inspection of the coarsest bronze wire has however convinced me that it was rolled, not drawn. It has absolutely regular square section, about 3.5 mm on a side, and is in lengths up to 1.3 m.
What can the Arch-Metals hive mind tell me about the early history of rolling metals in Europe? (I have not yet found any mention of the rolling of metals in the Islamic world, India or China before 1800). My searching to date has turned up the 1480 conceptual sketch by Leonardo da Vinci of a machine for rolling lead cames for windows, but no evidence for the actual use of a rolling mill until the 1590’s, and that for rolling and splitting iron plate. Do you know of any evidence for the rolling of copper rod or wire before the latter date?
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