Re: Peasant Craftsmen in the Medieval Forest

William Black wrote: dsget6$596$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,

"Peter Alaca" <P.Alaca@xxxxxx> wrote in message
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William Black wrote: dsfh6f$r69$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,

"celia" <c_a_blay@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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I wonder how such fine soldering was possible

Thanks for the references.
If the Vinland Map paper had been as well
researched as this we would have had something
to go on. A lovely piece of Dark Age jewellry,
it must have taken ages to make.

The original post hasn't yet turned up on my server...

So I haven't seen it yet...

Here it is again

I think this article about the great Wijnaldum fibula
is interesting for you.

"Scientific analysis of the gold disc-on-bow brooch"
A.J. NIJBOER & J.E. VAN REEKUM
http://tinyurl.com/bye3n

What is left
http://home.hetnet.nl/~adevanderwal/fibulawyn.jpg

A reonstruction
http://home.hetnet.nl/~adevanderwal/wijnaldum.jpg

I wonder how such fine soldering was possible.

It's a technique still used today.

You make your base plate and cut and shape the wires. These are
usually rectangular.

You place the solder and borax flux onto the baseplate where you want
the cell wires and put the wires in place on top. You use various
bits of iron as fillers and wedges, and extra flux to hold it all
together. Then you very carefully put the whole thing in a medium
cool (6-800 degrees C) furnace.

The thing gets hot, the solder melts and the wires settle into the
solder.

Looking at the pieces it looks like a two or three stage soldering
process which indicates extremely good furnace temperature control.

When it cools the wires have been soldered to the base plate by the
solder. When it's complete you file and polish the wire tops to make
them level and remove the excess solder inside the cells using a
'scorper', which is a highly specialised type of graver. You can see
what seems to be excess solder flow in a couple of the empty cells on
the illustrations.

I was particularly struck by the fine soldering
of the spirals of beaded gold wire on the silver
bow, as shown in fig 6.
I quess the same technique was used, but I think
it is even more delicate then the cells.

It doesn't seem to be what today is called cloisonné as each cell is
set with individual jewels rather than filled with enamel. It's
possible the technique is an attempt to copy Egyptian or Celtic glass
enamels by using (in today's terms rather dodgy) the standard
medieval gem setting techniques which almost invariably used forms of
bezels. In this case the wires form the bezels, probably made to
conform to the jewels available rather than the jewels cut to fit the
hole. This is normal practice even today. Cutting gems is hard work
and not an exact science, making settings is hard work as well, but
it is exact.

Somewhere I read once that the stones
were cut in specialists workshops, where
the garnet was not only split, but also cut
in more or less standardised forms.
And the 'more or less' shows in a lot of
early medieval jewelery.

The jewels are fitted into their cells, in this case glued, my old
diamond setting tutor would call that cheating, and a tool called a
'pusher' is used to deform the cell wire tops to hold the gems in
their settings.

When you polish and when you set gems is a matter of discussion even
today. Gem setters always complain about polishers ripping gems from
their settings, but this looks like it wasn't polished after gem
setting as what appear to be tool marks are visible on some of the
tops of the cell wires holding the gems in place.

The reproduction is rather badly photographed, but they seem to have
used a different soldering technique, one used by modern jewellers
rather than enamellers, where the corners of the cells are soldered
together. There is no sign of this type soldering on the original.
Medieval jewellers couldn't have done it, they didn't have gas
torches and an alcohol blowlamp couldn't get that workpiece hot
enough, it's too big...

The photograph of the reproduction is too poor for me to make out if
there are any visible tool marks, but modern practice is to burnish
them out anyway.

Thank


--
º°º°º°º < Peter Alaca > º°º°º°º°º°º°º°º°º°º°º°º°º°º°º°º°º°º°


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