Chapter XIX How to Begin Making a Vase
It is quite wonderful what a variety of different methods there are for making silver vases. We might here begin with the casting of silver, and then little by little get on to other subjects. There are three ways of melting silver so that it shall not burn.117 In the first you use the bellows, constructing round their mouth a little brick furnace sufficient to quite cover the crucible, even to be some four fingers above it; then rub the crucible all over, inside and out, with olive oil; put the silver into it & place it on the furnace; you should not have too many coals aglow at first for fear of cracking the crucible, for that is apt to happen with the sudden heat, but let it get gradually hotter and hotter, without touching your bellows, until it is red hot. At this point you gently start blowing with the bellows. After a while you will see the silver beginning to float like water; then you strew a handful of tartar over it, and while it stays a moment so, take a piece of linen folded four or five times & well soaked in oil, to lay this over the crucible when you remove it from the coals. Then swiftly take hold of the crucible with your cramping tongs,118 a pair of tongs made specially for catching hold of earthen crucibles, for if you catch hold of these as you would of iron crucibles you would break them, but these special tongs support the earthen crucible so that there is no danger of its breaking. Meanwhile, the moulds for pouring silver in must be at hand; these are made out of two iron plates of the requisite size and as occasion shall demand, and beneath119 them place a few square rods about the size of your little finger, more or less, as the work may need. The plates are then bound together with stout iron clamps, struck with a hammer till they grip the moulds equally all round. Of these clamps you need six or eight according to the size of the mould. Then you paint round the junction of the moulds with liquid clay so as to prevent the silver from coming through.120 When your moulds are well warmed, you pour a little oil into them, and stand them in an earthen pot of spent ashes, or even on the ground between four bricks, and so pour in your silver.121 That is one of the methods of casting.
Footnotes
117 Non si riarda.
118 Imbracciatoie.
119 ‘Infra’: should perhaps better be ‘between.’
120 Per cagione che lo argento non versi.
121 The sketch on p. 79 may be taken as illustrative of the process.