Valuable Secrets concerning Arts and Trades... Chap. II. Secrets relative to Metals.

Valuable Secrets concerning Arts and Trades:
or Approved Directions, from the best Artists, for the Various Methods...
Printed by Thomas Hubbard,
Norwich, 1795I. A secret to cause the transmutation of iron into the finest German steel.

1. Take of clean soot one pound; oak-wood ashes twelve ounces, and four of pounded garlicks. Boil all together in twelve pounds of common water, reduced to a third, or four pounds. Strain this, and dip in it the iron pegs, which you will afterwards stratify with the following cement.

2. Take burnt wood's coals, otherwise called cokes, and quick lime, of each three pounds: soot dried, and calcinated in an iron pan, one pound: decrepitate salt, four ounces. Make of this and your iron several beds alternately one over another; and, having well luted the vessels in which you shall have made those beds of iron and cement, give them a reverberating fire, for three times twenty-four hours, and the operation is done.


II. To make tin.

Take a discretionable quantity of rye-bran quite pure, boil it a minute or two in vinegar, then add to it a little water, and in that same istant plunge your sheets of black iron: then take out of the fire, and stop well, the vessel. Let your iron rest there and soak for twenty-four hours, after which time take off your iron sheets; score them well with the very bran with which they have been a-soaking, then rub them over a little with grindstones. This being done, make them soak again in a water wherein you mall have dissolved some ammoniac salt, whence having taken them off, set them a-draining, and rub them afterwards with rye-bran, and your tin will be done.

Observe that the vessel which you lay your sheets soaking, must be large enough to receive them, in full intended fire.


III. To break an iron bar as big as the arm.

Take melted soap with which you will rub your iron bar at the place where you would have it break. Then with any thing take off and clean away part of that unction, in the middle of it, about the width of half a crown. Then take a sponge, dipt into ardent water of three distillations; bring it round the bar, and, in six hours, it will break.


IV. Another for the same purpose.

In two pounds of aquafortis, dissolve orpine, sulphur, regal, and verdigrise, one ounce of each; of quick-lime, killed in two ounces of triple-distilled vinegar, one ounce. Place the whole in an alembic with one ounce of saltpetre, and two of ammoniac salt: and, having given a gradual fire to it, you will take the spirits which shall have distilled, and put them again over the fæces or residue, with an addition of two ounces of pulverised arsenic. Distill this a new, and keep what arises from it. In this, if you dip an handkerchief and turn it round as iron bar, in three hours time it will break with the greatest ease. You must only take a great care to guard yourself against the fumes, in distilling this composition.


V. To compose a metal of a gold colour.

Take refiner's copper six ounces: melt them into a crucible; add one ounce of calaminary stone; half an ounce of tuty, and one of terra merita, in powder. Give to this a melting fire for five or six hours running, and no more: then take off the crucible from the fire. Put this composition in powder, and add to it two ounces of common mercury, six of sea-salt exsiccated, and a sufficient quantity of water. Set the whole a-boiling, until there appear no more mercury. Then, pat the matter into a crucible, and place it between two fires of kindled coals, avoiding carefully the breathing of the fumes. Give this a melting fire, for two hoars, then wash the composition in water, till this runs off quite clear. Set this again in a crucible: and, when melted, pour it into an ingot. This will give you a metal, of the most beautiful gold colour which can be desired, and which you may make use of for plates, buckles, snuff-boxes, caneheads, &c. But one cannot recommend too much the avoiding of breathing the fumes of this composition, while it is making.


VI. Another composition of metal.
Take a certain reasonable quantity of the leaves of Persicaria Urens, called Arsmart, or, vulgarly, Waterpepper, which you will dry in the shade. Melt in a crucible six ounces of refiner's copper, and, when melted, throw in one ounce of powder of the arsmart's leaves, or even half an ounce; then cover the crucible with an iron lid, and keep this matter in fusion for the space of one hour, after which you cast it in an ingot. This process will give you a metal which (except the colour that a[r]tists can at any time give it by an industry well known to them) has otherwise all the qualities of gold. The only defect is, that it cannot bear testing, and that it must therefore serve only to supply common copper which rusts easily, and has not so much brightness. It may be used for candlesticks, and other similar works.

We thought it was proper here to give this receipt, as it is to be wished we could make ourselves those metallic compositions, which we import from Holland, and other coutries.


VII. To dissolve gold in your naked hand.

Distill hart's blood just killed: and, after having drawn the spirits per ascensum in balneo-mariæ cohobate again three different times. At the third distillation you sublime all the fixt: and, when done, lute well the vessel, and keep the liquor for use. This liquor, carefully preserved, will dissolve gold in the naked palm of your hand.


VIII. How to give some perfection to imperfect metals.

It is well known that gold is the most perfect of metals. After this comes silver, the principles of which are very near pure, and equally proportioned between them as those of gold. All other metals are reckoned imperfect and crude. Among them however that which approaches nearest to perfection, is copper. This therefore may easily be purified, by being delivered of all the superficial and com sulphurs with which it is loaded. And whoever will proceed, according to the following direction, will not fail to obtain it.

1. Take what quantity you please of copper. Set it in a crucible over a melting fire. While melting in that crucible, throw in at different times some tutty powder "mixed with equal parts of refined saltpetre. Then, the detonations being made, take the crucible out of the fire and let it cool. Break the crucible and separate the scories from the regulus. Put the copper-regulus into another crucible, and reiterate the same operation three times, till the copper is extremely fine and true gold colour.

2. Now, if you set it a-melting for the fourth time, and project on it perikaria's or hydro-pepper's leaves powder, you will render it still more perfect: and you might thus purify it so far, as to give it, at last, all the qualities of gold.

3. Whoever will know how to purify brass from its foreign sulphur, will turn it likewise into a very fine silver.

4. You may also whiten lead; and, giving it the hardness of silver, render it similar to it.

5. Pewter and quicksilver may likewise be purified, its separating from this last its arsenical sulphurs, and fixing it by the supplement of a fixt, metallic, incombuslible and solary sulphur. The other may, by taking from it its superfluous salinepart, and uniting its mercurial one to the true metallic sulphur. But this we cannot expest to attain, if not previously versed in the method of dissolving, analysing, and dividing or separating, and then re-embodying again metallic substances; and this is known by none but the sons of the art, the adepts alone.


IX. To melt all sorts of metals in the shell of nut, without burning it.

Take saltpetre two ounces: sulphur half an ounce; oak's, walnut trees, or any other very dry wood's saw-dust half an ounce. Let the saw-dust be lifted very fine, and the saltpetre and sulphur reduced to an impalpable powder. All this being well mixed together, fill the shell of a nut with it to the brim; then lay over it a piece of gold, silver, or any other metal you please; and, having covered it again with the same powder, set the fire to it, and you will see that the metal will melt and remain at the bottom of the shell.


X. To increase the virtue of a loadstone.

You must let it soak, for forty days, in iron-oil.


XI. To restore gold to its weight, after it has lost it in regal water.

Put a bit of tortoise shell to soak, for sometime, in regal water. Then put your gold in it, and, by that means, it will recover its lost weight.


XII. To operate the transmutation of silver into gold.

1. Get a new iron-pan to grow red hot upon a trivet, and then put two pounds of lead in it. As soon as this is melted, throw over it, by degrees, some good saltpetre pulverised. This will melt likewise. Keep it thus in fusion till it is at least half dissipated. Should it take fire during that time, it does not signify; for, it hurts nothing, and the more concocted over again the saltpetre is, the stronger is the oil.

2. Let this cool, divide the saltpetre from the lead. After having well pounded it on a marble stone, carry it into the cellar. There, it will fall into deliquium which you will pour into a cucurbit, with double its weight of true French spirit of wine, added by little and little at a time; then distil by a slow fire. Grind on marble, as before, what remains in the cucurbit: and, being turned into deliquium, put it again into the cucurbit with some more spirit of wine. Take off these dissolutions and cohobations, repeating the same process over again as before, till th saltpetre remains at the bottom of the cucurbit resolved into a true oil which congeals itself no longer, and this will procure you what is called the Fix-balm.

3. Next to that operation, you will make an aquafortis with equal parts of salt-petre, dried vitriol, and roch alum: and, before you put the receiver to the cucurbit, add steel-filings, antimony, verdigrise, in subtile powder, tatty and cinnabar, of each half an ounce, or one ounce, according to the quantity of aquafortis you want to draw. Cohobate the spirits seven times over, upon the fæces, which you will grind each time on a marble table.

4. Dissolve one ounce of silver in three of this liquor: and, on that solution, still, drop by drop, one ounce of your nitre-oil in a bottle made like the hour-glasses, which after the operation must be at most only half-full, and which you will cover with another inverted, so that the neck of the under one should get into that of the upper one. Or, else, put it in a matrass with a long neck, which you will seal hermetically; but, if you make use of bottles, take care to lute well the joints. Place this over hot ashes, and plunge it in them to the heighth of six inches. Give under this a lamp fire, which should not reach the matter by three fingers distance. You will get every day to the amount of a silver pennyweight of silver fixed into gold. And, when the whole shall have been fixed thus, day after day, the aquafortis, which before was green as an emerald, will become as clear as pump-water. Let the composition cool, and divide the water from the oil, which will never be the worse for use, and must therefore be preserved. At the bottom of the vessel, you will find the silver fixed into gold.


XIII. Fixation of gold into silver.

1. Sublime, on a sand fire, some arsenic, with an equal weight of decrepitate salt. Take the middle and crystaline matter which sublimates, rejecting the subtile flour which rises on the head, and the dregs which remain in the bottom. Sublime over again this crystal, and reiterate so many times as necessary that no flour should longer sublimate.

2. Calcinate some silver with mercury, with which amalgamate it, and this as many times as you may find necessary, that the water in which you wash your silver, after the dissipation of the mercury by means of fire, should ran as fair and clean as when you poured it over it.

3. Take one ounce of this calcinated silver, and four of the aforesaid arsenic: sublime the whole so many times as necessary, that nothing should ascend any more. This sublimation may easily be performed in a matrass laid on its side, which you must turn lo as to put always underneath what is sublimed above. By means of such an industrious practice you avoid the necessity of breaking your matrasses every time you want to resublime what was already sublimed. At last the matter turns into a stone. which, having pounded, you put on digesting bath, till it is all reduced into a fixt oil; which you know to be done by the transparency of the vessel.

4. Take four parts of mercury, and one of that oil. Put first the mercury into the crucible, and, afterwards, this fixt oil. Give a gradual fire, till all the composition be reduced into a lump, which adheres to the crucible. Take it out and test it; you will find it to be the silver in the world.


XIV. To extract mercury from lead.

Take pearl ashes one pound; vine ashes four; quicklime one, and pebbles calcinated two. Make strong lye of the whole with distilled vinegar. Dissolve in this two pounds of lead: and, when the lye is become white, throw in ten ounces of borax. When this is dissolved, throw the whole into a retort, and distil it with a gradual fire. You will get, into the receiver, ten ounces, at least, of quick silver.


XV. Another mercury from lead.

Take lead filings one pound; ammoniac salt four ounces; bricks, pounded into a powder, three pounds. Distil this composition, in a retort, on a gradual fire. The receiver must be very large, half full of water, and, the fire must be continued for twelve hours, pushing it, by degrees, to the very last.


XVI. Permutation of lead into silver.

Take fine lead; calcine it with common salt, or, else, with that sort of salt which is extracted from the dregs, steces, or caput mortuum of Saltprtre and vitriol calcinaed both together. Soak the whole warmly with oil of vitriol till you make it come into an unctuous paste. This you will put in a pot, or crucible, well luted, and placed in a pan full of sand, with which you will cover it over intirely. Make under this a digesting fire; that is to say, such a fire as is necessary to warm the sand: keep it so for ten days, then take off your matter, and test it. Out of one hundred and five pounds weight of lead, you will draw five marcs, or two pounds and half weight, of silver capable to stand the test.


XVII. Fixation of saltpetre.

Melt some lead in a crucible, and project on it pulverised nitre, reiterating the projections in proportion as the matter fuses, till it is entirely melted.


XVIII. Transmutation of iron into copper.

Iron is easily changed into copper by means of the vitriol. To do this you put your iron stratum super stratum in a descensorium, and let it over a strong blast fire, pushed by bellows, till the iron melts and flows into copper. You must not forget when you have made your beds of vitriol, to water them a little over with vinegar saturated of saltpetre, alkaline, and tarter salts and verdigrise.


XIX. Another to the same purpose.

Pound some vitriol in powder, and dilstil the spirits from it by means of the retort. Replace the spirits on the caput mortuum, then plunge and extinguish in them some red lot iron laminas, or filings: and, by little and little, the iron will turn into copper.


XX. Another.

Dissolve vitriol in common water; pass it through filtering paper, then evaporate the water unto a pellicula, and put it in the cellar, for one night, and you will obtain some green crystals. Redden them in the fire, then dissolve them three or four times in distilled vinegar, drying them every time, till these crystals become red. Dissolve them again in the same vinegar and extinguish in it some red hot iron laminas, filings, or any other iron rubbish; they, and every one, will, by these means, turn into a very fine copper.


XXI. To preserve the brghtness of arms.

Rub them with hart's marrow. Or, else, dissolve some allum powder with the strongest vinegar you can find, (that of Montpellier which serves to make their famous verdigrise is the fittest), and rub your arms with it. By these means they keep forever bright and shining.


XXII. To manage steel so, that it may cut iron as it were lead.

Draw, by an alembic, the water which will come from a certain quantity of earth-worms; join with this water an equal quantity of horse-radish's juice. Then temper, four or five times, in this liquor your iron kindled red hot. That sort of steel is made use of for knives, swords, and other instruments, with which you may cut iron with as much ease as if it were lead.


XXIII. To soften steel.

Take a descretionable quantity of garlic, rob them of their coarsest peel, then boil them in oil of nuts till reduced in o an unguentum. Cover well your steel all over with that, composition to the thickness of half a crown. When this is done, put your steel, thus covered, in the forge, in the live coals, and it will become soft. To restore it, afterwards to the temper, called by artists red cherry colour, you must, after having made it red hot, plunge it in the coldest water.


XXLV. To extract mercury from antimony.

Take antimony and decrepitate salt, of each one pound. Mix them together and put in a retort of two quarts. Set the retort on the bare fire, or on the gradual sand fire. Let the beak of the retort be in water, and at the bottom of that vessel, wherein the water is, you will find the running mercury of antimony.


XXV. A magical mercurial ring.

Take verdigrise half a pound, and an equal quantity of copperas. Pulverise each of them separately, and put these powders into an iron pan which hath never been used before for any thing else. Boil the whole, for about two minutes, in very strong vinegar. Then throw into the pan half a pound of crude mercury, which you will incessantly stir with a wooden spatula. Begin to boil first by a sloow fire, and never cease to stir the whole well for fear of the adhesion of mercury. In proportion as the vinegar sinks you may add more, not exceeding, however, the quantity of half a pint, or there abouts. When this has boiled about a couple of hours, the matter will remain in a lump at the bottom of the pan. Let it cool with the small quantity of vinegar which shall remain after the ebullition, then throw it in to a large pan of cold water. Handle this lump well in that water, in order to purge it from all the munditiæ. Throw that first water away, and put clean water in, and do the same again and again, keeping handling the matter well in your waters, till the last remains clear as rock water. When your mercury is thus well fixed, put it in a clean piece of linnen to take off the superfluous parts; and what remains well fixed after this second trial, you must extend on a sheet of white paper, on which, having flattened it quickly, and cut as hastily, for fear it should grow too hard, into small bits of the form and size you like, you expose it to the dew of one night, from the evening to the morning, and then you will and it as hard as iron.


XXVI. To melt the aforesaid mercury.

Take Alexandrian tuty, and terra merita, of each half a pound, separately pulverised and mixed afterwards together. Stratify your bits of the above mercury, making the first and last strata, or beds, with the powders and a little thicker than the others. Cover your crucible wish another, and lute them so well that there should no, chink remain, which you will examine well after having dried them in an oven. When perfectly dry, place your crucibles in a gold or black-smith's furnace, and surround them well with live coals every way, by the sides, top, and bottom, which you will make blasting for a quarter of an hour; and push by strength of bellows during half an hour, then let them cool gradually in the fire till the next day: when, taking off your crucible, you will find your matter turned into a gold colour. Throw it into a pan of water, and wash it well till the water remains clear. The whole being granulated, put it in a small crucible with half an ounce of borax, and melt it as you would gold, or silver, then throw in it an ingot. With this matter you will make your rings in drawing this metal through the wiring bench, or otherwise.


XXVII. The virtue of those rings.

They stop the colds in the head, shew the disorders one, may be affected with, particularly in those well-know monthly diseases of women. At such times the ring turns of a dust red dolour. They are also very useful in killing the worms in small children, if you make them boil in a varnished new pipkin, with a glass (or four ounces) of water, reduced to a third, and drunk fasting.


XXVIII. A fixation of copper which will be found to yield six ounces out of eight, on the test.

Take two ounces of fine pewter, which melt in a crucible, adding gradually to it, after it is melted, an equal quantity in weight of flour of sulphur. When all is calcinated, and while still a little warm, add, again to it half an ounce of common purified mercury, stirring continually with a spatula till the mercury disappearsentirely. There will come a powder, of which if you project one, on four ounces of red copper in fusion, then stir and call in ingots, you may obtain the promised advantage.


XXIX. To whiten copper so as to make very fine figures with it.

Take five parts of copper, which you will melt in a crucible, then throw in one part of zinc. As soon as the zinc is in it, take if off from the fire, and stir the matter a little with an iron rod, then cast it in the molds of your figures. They will look like silver casted ones.


XXX. To give the finest colour of gold to copper, in order to make statutes or other works, with it.

Take one pound of copper, melt it in a crucible, then throw in it one ounce of Alexandrian tuty reduced into a subtle powder, and mixed with two ounces of beanflour. Take care to keep stirring this matter, and to guard yourself against the fumes. After two hours of fusion, you will take this composition off, and wash it well, and put it again in the crucible with the same quantity as before of the same powders. When melted, for this second time, you may take it off, and call it in the molds you propose, and had prepared for it.


XXXI. To imitate tortoise-shell on copper.

Rub copper laminas over with oil of nuts, then dry them over a slow fire supported, by their extremities, upon small iron bars.


XXXII. To perform the same on horn.

Make a cold dissolution of auripigment in filtered lime-water: then, lay some of this liquor with a brush on your comb or other horn work. Reiterate this, if you find it has not penetrated enough the first time, and turn it to do the same the other side.


XXXIII. To soften metals.

Take saltpetre and camphire equal parts. Dissolve them in a lye made with two parts of oakwood ashes and one of quicklime. Pass this solution through a filtering paper, and vaporise it over a slow fire in a glass vessel. There results a borax which, thrown in metals while in fusion, softens them perfectly.


XXXIV. To wash brass figures over, with silver.

Take one ounce of aquafortis. Dissolve in it over a moderate fire one drachm of good silver cut small, or granulated. This silver being wholly dissolved, take the vessel off from the fire, and throw in it as much white tartar as is required to absolve all the liquor. The rest is a paste with which you may rub over any work made of copper, and which will give it the white colour of silver.


XXXV. To operate the transmutation of iron into steel.
Take beech and willow, burn them together. When in coals, extinguish them, before they are consumed, with water, or rather, with chamber-lye. Pound them well, and sift them through a very fine sieve. Then burn likewise ox horns, and prepare them the same way. Sift well also soot, vine ashes, burnt shoes ashes, and pomegranates' shells' powder, putting aside and separately each drug by itself, and mix them afterwards, when used, in the following proportions. - Coals twelve pounds; horns ten; shoes, vine, soot, and pomegranate, of each equal quantity, three pounds, all well mixed together. To make one hundred pounds weight of steel, there is required one hundred and twenty pounds weight of good, soft Spanish iron, not streaky: to which, if you give the aforementioned dose of the said powders, prepared as directed, and put to the fire, for the space of forty-eight hours, you will get the best steel which can be had.


XXXVI. Another receipt for the same.

1. Take one bushel of beech coals pulverised and sifted; alder's coals, thus prepared, one peck; vine ashes and loot, both well pulverised and sifted, equal parts, half a peck. Mix well these powders, and stratify your iron bars with them in a crucible well luted; then give a good fire for twenty-four hours.

N. B. Observe that you must take care to use new, and not floted wood, to make the said ashes.

2. If you want to have your steel white, you must add to all the above powders one peck of juniper-wood ashes.

3. If you want it purple, you must make a lexiviation of vine and shoes ashes, soot and garlick, well pounded, equal parts; and a sufficient quantity of water to make the said bullitorium in which you will steep, cold, your iron bars before you cement them.

4. You must proportionate the quantity of windholes in each kiln to the quantity of bars, and of crucibles, for which you intend to fit it.

5. The stratum super stratum ought to be made one, or, one and an half, inch thick of powder to each bed. - The bars ought to be ranged cross-way one over another; and large crucibles are to be prefered to small ones. - You must take care to have them so well luted, as not to allow the least air to find its way in; for there would result an intire miscarriage of the whole operation; a besides, your powder would hence lose all its virtue. - Should you likewise let it get air before you make use of it, it would become quite dead and flat. Therefore you are cautioned to keep it always very closely confined, in well-stopped vessels, of whatever kind they may be. - That which comes off from the crucible, after the operation, is not worse for having been thus in use. It wants, therefore, nothing but an additional supply of fresh powder, joined to it, to make up what is lost, or diminished, by the frequent handlings of it, in taking it out, and putting it in, the crucibles again.

6. The kiln ought to be wide by the inferior part, and go narrowly towards the top, which must end in a conical form. By such means, the heat contracted be comes strong, and acts with infinitely more power. - Neither must you neglect to have it so constructed as to be provided with an ash-hole, or a place underneath wherein the ashes may fall; and several openings to set the wind escape.


*†* An estimate of the costs, and profits, of such an operation in France.

The thousand weight of iron, in bars flat on side, costs about sixty livres. Two thousand being requisite, at a time, for one single operation, make one hundred and twenty livres, or, five pounds sterling.
Ten crucibles this will employ: ten livres.
Powders for the two thousands; forty livres.
For two men to sit up, and watch, in order to keep up the fire; four livres.
To 'prepare the steel, after it is out of the crucibles, and render it marketable; twenty livres.

All the expence amounts to two hundred livres or eight pounds eight, or ten, shalling, sterling, or hereabout. Iron; thus turned into steel, whether white or purple, comes, on computation, to two sols, or one penny pound; which makes one hundred livres per thousand weight. - Thus, the two thousands weight, which maybe made in the same kiln, every week, come to two hundred livres.

If you fell your steel, on the sooting of six sols per pound, there is, clear profit, four hundred livres a week; which, in a year, would make 20,800 livres. - Now, you may, on this calculation, have as many kilns as you please; and each kiln may make a kilnful every week.


XXXVII. To take immediately rust from iron.

You must rub your iron with a piece of rag keeped into oil of tartar per deliquium.


XXXVIII. To obtain good silver from pewter.

1. Take quick lime made from rock or transparent pebbles, and one pound of common salt. With those two ingredients make a strong lye which you will evaporate on the fire to the reduction of one third part of what it made before. Next, melt in a crucible two pounds of pewter, to which, after fusion, you will add one pound of fiaetnntitashaematitas. The whole being well incorporated and melted, throw it in part of your aforesaid lue: and, when quite cold, melt it again, and throw in again into new lye, repeating the same process for seven different times, and using fresh lye, prepared as above every time.

2 The next operation is to take one ounce of ammoniac salt, an equal quantity of borax, eight scruples of auripigment, reduce them into a very fine and subtile powder, and being mixed together, incorporate them into a paste with the whites of two new-laid eggs, and put all together with the pewter, ready prepared as before mentioned, in a crucible. When all is in fusion, continue the fire for one hour; then, take off the crucible. There you will find your silver, fit to stand the test of all the allayers.


XXXIX. To soften iron.

Take half an ounce of tartar; two of common salt; and two and a half of verdigrise. Mix all together, and cxpofe it in a porringer to the dew of nine nights running. This will turn into water, in which, when redhot, you may kill your iron.


XL. To melt iron so that it will spread under the hammer.

Take equal quantities of lime, tartar, and alkali salt. Pour over it a sufficient quantity of cow-piss, to make a thick pap with it, which you will set a-drying in the sun, or before the fire. Make an iron red-hot in the fire; then, plunge it in that matter. You may afterwards melt it as you would silver; and, then, work it the same way, when cold.


XLI. To give iron a temper to cut porphyry.

Make your iron red-hot, and plunge it in distilled water from nettles, acanthus, and pilosella, (or mouse-ears); or in the very juice pounded out from these plants.


XLII. To soften all sorts of metals.

Take sublimate mercury, euphorbium, borax, and ammoniac salt, of each equal parts pulverised. Project some of that powder over any metal when in a state of fusion, and you will obtain the desired effect of making it soft.


XLIII. To soft on a sophistic metal.

Take black soap and common salt, of each two ounces; human excrements dried and pulverised, four ounces; rock alum an equal quantity, and nitre salt, half an ounce. Incorporate all together in a pan, over the fire, with bullock's gall, keeping stirring with a spatula, till you feel no longer with it any saline particle. Then take off the pan from the fire, and let the composition cool. Of this you may throw some into the crucible in which your metal is in fusion.


XLIV. A good temper for arms.

Take tythimalus, or spurge; roots of wild horse-radish, bryonia, and, purstain, of each equal quantities. Pound all together, so that you may get at least one pound of juice. Add to this one pound of red-haired child's water; saltpetre, alkaline, gem and ammoniac salts, of each one drachm. When you have mixed all well together in a glass vessel perfectly closed and stopped, bury it in the cellar, and let it there lie for twenty days. Then bring it up again, and put it in a retort, to which you will adapt and lute well its receiver, and begin to distil by a gradual fire. Now, when you want to get arms of a good temper, you have only to plunge them in this distilled liquor, after having previousiy made them red hot in the fire.


XLV. Another very hard temper.

Take nettles' juice, bullock's gall, child's water, or strong vinegar, and a little salt. Incorporate well all this together, and plunge any red hot iron in it.


XLVI. To melt iron and make it soft.

Take two pounds of auripigment, and four of oil of tartar. Make the auripigment soak up all the oil of tartar, and dry it up afterwards over a soft fire. Then put small bits of iron in a crucible; and, when very red, throw by little at a time about half a pound of that auripigment prepared as before; and you will find your iron soft and white.


XLVII. To whiten iron like silver.

Melt iron filings in a crucible, along with realgar, or red arsenic. Then take one ounce of that matter and one of copper; melt all together, and put it in a coppel. It will give you one ounce of good silver.


XLVIII. To render iron brittle, so as to pound like glass.

Take the distilled water from rock alum, plunge in it seven different times your pieces of iron, or steel, beaten very thin, and made red hot every time. This operation will render them so brittle, that you may pound them in a mortar, afterwards, as you could glass.


XLIX. Ingredients which serve to the melting of Iron.

Iron is to be melted with any of the following ingredients; viz. pewter, lead, marcusite, magnesia, auripigment, antimony, crown-glass, sulphur, ammoniac salt, citrin-emirobolans, green, or fresh, pomegranate rinds, &c. &c.


L. To melt or calcinate the blade of a sword without hurting the scabbard.
You must drop into the scabbard of the sword some arsenic in powder, and squeeze over it some part of the juice of a lemon. Then replace the sword into its scabbard. In a quarter of an hour afterwards, or little more, you will see what a surprising effect this will have.


LI. A spirit which will dissolve all sorts of stones, without excepting the most hard.

Take rye-flour and make small balls with it, which you will dry; then put them into a retort well luted, and place it over a gradual fire to draw the spirits by distillation. If in the spiritous liquor, which will come from this operation, you put any stone whatever, it will dissolve.


LII. To refine pewter.

Take fine pewter, and put it into a crucible. When melted, project over it, at different times, some nitre, till it comes to a perfect calcination. Repeat this three different times, pounding the matter into powder, which you will mix with charcoal's dust. Then, being thus inched for the third time, it will resume its former substance of pewter, with this difference, that it will be refined to an infinitely superior degree.


LIII. To fix mercury.

Take verdigrise in powder, which you will put in a crucible. Make a hole in that powder, and place in it a knot of mercury previously impregnated with white of eggs' water. Cover this knot over with borax, and add again over this some more verdigrise and pounded glass, one or two fingers deep. Lute well the lid of the crucible, and give a pretty smart fire, though gradually, and not at once, for the space of two hours.


LIV. To extract mercury from lead.

Take lead and beat it into sheets, or laminas, very fine. Put these in a glass vessel with common salts a double quantity of the lead. Cover this well, and bury it under ground for nine days at least. After that time, if you open the vessel again, you will find your lead turned all into running mercury, or quicksilver, at the bottom of it.


LV. The composition of cast mirrors and cylinders.

Take one pound and a half of red copper; eight ounces of refined pewter; one and a half of stellated mars-regulus, otherwise regulus of antimony; half an ounce of bismuth; one and an half of nitre, and a discretionable quantity (that is to say as much as you please) of silver.


LVI. The true composition of metallic mirrors, or looking-glasses, used among the ancients.

1. Take one pound of decapitated, or well purified, copper, which you will melt; then throw over it three pounds of refined pewter. As soon as they shall be both in good fusion, add six ounces of calcined red tartar, two of arsenic, half an ounce of saltpetre, and two drachms of alum. Leave all this in fusion together for the space of three, or four, hours, that all the salts may well evaporate, then you will cad this composition in the flat sand mould prepared for it.

2. To give these mirrors the requisite polish, you proceed as follows. Begin first by taking the coarsest part away with the wheel over a grinding-stone, after the same method as the pewterers and braziers do, and then you smoorhen them with water till they are sufficiently polished by attrition. The second step is to take the mirror from that wheel, and put it on the wooden one covered with leather, after having rubbed it well with emery in order to give it a fine polish, and eat off the scratches which may have happened to it oh the first wheel. Then you must take it again from this wheel and put it on another of the same kind, covered likewise with leather, after having previously rubbed your mirror with prepared blood-stone, and washing it afterwards with magister of pewter. Take notice that you are to make your mirrors observe, on both these last leathered wheels, the same oblique direction in turning them, and continue so long till the mirror has acquired a sufficient fineness and brightness.

Convex and ardent mirrors are rubbed and polished in the same manner.


LVII. To make convex and ardent mirrors.

1. Take one pound of copper in laminas. Cut them in small pieces to get them into a crucible, and impregnate them with oil of tartar. Then take a quarter of a pound of white arsenic in powder, with which you will stratify your laminas, putting bed upon bed till the crucible is full. Cover this crucible with a lid of the same earth; lute it well and set it to dry. When done, plunge it to the lid in the sand, and give it a gradual fire, till it is strong enough to evaporate the oil. During that time the oil prepares the copper, in detaining the arsenic and making it pass into it with the same facility as oil passes through leather. You may, if you chuse, place your crucible in the furnace on the bare fire; but then you must manage the fire gradually till the oil is quite evaporated. This being done, let the crucible cool, and break it; you will find your copper variegated with several colours, and it would be still more so, if, instead of arsenic, you had used auripigment.

2. Take of this copper one part, and two of brass. Melt first the brass on a blasting fire; then throw in your prepared copper. When they shall have been in good fusion a pretty good while, throw this metal into a pan full of lukewarm water, over which you shall have placed a birch-broom, to force your metal to granulate in falling through its twigs into the water. By such precaution your metal will be so hard as to refill the file; will not be brittle; and acquire the same qualities as steel, instead of which you may even employ it, on many occasions, for various sorts of works.

3. Now take of this hardened metal three parts; of the best Cornwall pewter, and perfectly free from lead, one part. Melt first the metal, as we said before, on a blasting fire, then put your pewter to it; and, when both are well melted together, you will throw this composition in the convex mould to make the concave, and in the concave to make the convex mirrors. This composition is the best which can be employed for the manu facturing of these sorts of mirrors. It is white, hard, never brittle, and susceptible of receiving the highest and most finished polish.


LVIII. To give tools such a temper, as will enable them to saw marble.

Make the tool red hot in the fire; and, when red cherry-colour, take it off from the fire, rub it with a piece of candle, and steep it immediately in good strong vinegar, in which you shall have diluted some soot.


LIX. To soften iron, and harden it afterwards more than it was before.

1. Make a little chink lengthways in an iron bar, in which you will pour melted lead. Then make it evaporate by a strong fire, as that for copelling. Renew this operation four or five times, and the bar will become very soft. You harden it afterwards in steeping it, when red hot, in mere forge water; and it will be of so good a temper as to be fit for lancets, razors, and knives, with which you will be able to cut other iron without its splitting or denting.

2. It has been found by experience, that an armour can never be good proof against fire-arms, if it has not first been softened with oils, gums, wax, and other incerative things, and afterwards hardened by steeping them several times over in binding waters.


LX. To operate the transmutation of iron into damask-steel.

You must first purge it of its usual brittleness: and, after having reduced it into filings, make it red hot in a crucible; deep it several times in oil of olives, in which you shall have before thrown several times melted lead. Take care to cover the vessel in which the oil is contained, every time you throw your steel into it, for fear the oil should catch fire.


LXI. To guard iron against rusting.

Warm your iron till you can no more touch it without burning yourself. Then rub it with new and clean white wax. Put it again to the, fire, till it has soaked in the wax. When done, rub it over with a piece of serge, and this iron will never rail.


LXII. To cut pebbles with ease.

Boil it a good while in some mutton-suet; and, then, you will cut it very easily.


LXIII. To whiten copper.

Take auripigment and eggs, shells calcined, equal quantities. Put all together in a pot covered with another having a little hole on the top. Give it first the wheel-fire for three hours. Then increase the fire, and, what shall have been sublimed remix with the fæces again. Sublime anew, and mix again the fæces and the flouis together. Then, for the third time, there will he no more sublimation; only the flours will swim over the fæces. Now take arsenic of one single sublimation, and crude tartar, of each equal parts well mixed together, and stratify with this mixed powder same very thin copper laminas. Then push the fire with violence to the degree of fusion, and granulate it in water, which you are to put in great agitation for a good while before, you throw the matter into it, in order to prevent there by your matter from sparkling when you throw it. In reiterating this operation on the same metal, you will render your copper as beautiful as silver.


LXIV. A projection on copper.

1. Take fine pewter two ounces, which yon will melt in a crucible. When melted, throw in it by little at a time the same weight of flour of brimstone. Stir every time with a rod, till you see both your pewter and sulphur well calcined. Then take the crucible out of the fire and throw in half an ounce of crude mercury. Let it cool and pulverise this.

2. Now melt four ounces of molten copper. When in good fusion project on it, by degrees, one ounce of the above powder, stirring carefully, while you do it, with a stick. Leave it thus in fusion for a little while, and then you may use it for making all sorts of plates. It is so beautiful, that, if you test it on the coppel wish kad, it will stand it perfectly.


LXV. A receipt for the preparation of emery.

1. Calcine eastern, or Spanish emery, three, or four, times in the fire; then let it cool. Pound it and make strata super strata of it, with double the quantity of sulphur-vivum in powder. Leave this crucible in the furnace with a strong fire during three or four hours. Repeat this process four different times over, then reduce your emery into an impalpable powder. Put it next into a matrass, pour over it regal water, that it swim over by three fingers deep. Put this in digestion for eight hours. Pour off by inclination your regal water impregnated with the dye. Put new water on your matter, and set it on digesting again for eight other hours, as the former. Then take your thus tinged waters, which you will mix and pat in a retort. Distil most part of it, till you see that what remains in the retort is yellow. This is the true oil of emery, in whick you will put the bigness of a filbert of camphire.

2. Exsulphurate in a crucible, on a good fire, and during two hours, what quantity you please of arsenic. Then take two ounces of the aforesaid oil of emery, one of your exsulphurated arsenic, an equal quantity of salt of tartar drawn with distilled vinegar, two of sublimate, and two of silver; which you will have dissolved in an aquafortis made with nitre and vitriol. Put all together in a matrass so large that the composition should occupy no more than a third part of it, and of which you shall have cut the neck off, to obtain a more easy evaporation of the compounds from it. Put this matrass in the sand as high as the matter, and give it a moderate fire for two hours, then a strong ore for fix, after which you will let the fire go out of itself. When done, you will find your matter in a stone in the matrass. Take it out and pound it into powder. One ounce of this powder, projected upon another ounce of salt in fusion, if you keep it a little while in that state, and throw it afterwards into oil of olives, will increase your gold by a third of its primary quantity and rather more: And you snay thus increase it again and again by repeating the same operation.


LXVI. A factitious amiant; or the way to make an incombustible cloth.
Take rotten oakwood which you will calcine into aftes, and mix with an equal quantity of pearl-ashes. Boil all together in ten times its weight of water, When this has boiled one hour, add as much water to it as there may have been evaporated, and boil now in it a large stick of alumen plumosum, during one hour. Take off the vessel from the fire, and carry it into the cellar. In a month's time you will find your alum as soft as flax. Spin it, and get it weaved into a cloth. The fire will never have any power over it. On the contrary, the best way to wssh it is to throw it on red hot coals; and, after having there let it burn throughout, take it off, and you will find it perfectly clean.


LXVII. To render tartar fusible and penetrating.

1. Stratify cakes of white tartar with vine branches. When done set them on fire by the top, and when arrived at the bottom your tartar will be calcined.

2. Dissolve this calcined tartar in aquavitæ, then pass it through the filtring paper, and next evaporate the brandy. What shall remain is the salt of tartar, which you must find to be as white as snow. Pour over it the bed and the truest French spirit of wine, so that it should exceed over the salt the thickness of an inch. Set it on fire. As soon as your spirit of wine shall be all consumed, your salt of tartar will be fusible and penetrating.

3. Now should you make any iron red hot, and project on it a little of that salt, it will penetrate it through and through, and leave after it a vestige as white as silver in the place where it touched.


LXVIII. To extract mercury from any metal.

1. Dissolve lead, antimony, or any other metal, in good common aquafortis. When that water mall have dissolved as much of it. as it can, pour it out by inclination, and on what shall not yet be quite dissolved, but corroded only in a white powder, pour some hot water. Shake then the matrass in which the metal is, and you will find that the water will finish to dissolve what the aquafortis could not. Next to this pass it through a filtring paper; and, what you will find not able to pass, dissolve it now with some fresh aquafortis, or only water, if it so appear to you that this may do. Continue thus the same dissoluting process, till you have obtained a perfect dissolution of all the powder, and you have made it pass through the filtring paper. Now take all your several dissolutions, both those made with hot water and those made with aquafortis, and mix them all together. Make a precipitation of that dissolution to the bottom of the vessel in form of white curds, by means of a water impregnated with salt. Edulcorate this twice, with cold common water, and once with some a little warm, then dry it.

2. Take one ounce of that dissolution, thus edulcorated and exsiccated into powder; half an ounce of ammoniac salt sublimed over common salt. Grind all together on a marble stone with a mullar for a long while, that it may be well incorporated, as the painters do their colours; and, to succeed better in that incorporation, impregnate it with distilled vinegar. Now put all this into a pan, and pour cold water over it, so that it should swim over the matter, stir it well twice a day with a stick, for three whole weeks. Then take quick lime, which you will slack with the swimming liquor which covers your matter; and, with equal quantities of the powder which lies under it, and the slacked lime, make small bullets, which you will put into a retort well luted, and push it on with a great fire. You will soon see the mercury going into the receiver, which you must have had the precaution of filling with water, and under which, at the bottom, you will find it.

3. The same process carefully attended to, may procure you mercury from all the metals and minerals without exception.


LXIX. To dye in gold silver medals, or laminas, through and through.

1. This curious operation is performed by means of the admirable salt of Glauber, which is made with nitre and vitriol oil, in the following manner. - Take what quantity you please of nitre salt, pour over it a sufficient quantity of oil of vitriol, to have it swim over. When ebullitions arising from that mixture shall be ended, distil to dryness; there remairs a white salt known under the name of salt of Glauber

2. Dissolve in what quantity of warm water you think, proper, or be in need of, a sufficient quantity of that salt as may saturate it, which you know when you see the water can dissolve no more of it. In this dissolution put a drachm of calx, or magister, of gold. Then put in digestion in it silver laminas cut small and thin, and let them so for twenty-four hours over a very gentle fire. At the end of that term you will find them the roughly dyed gold colour, inside and outside.


LXX. To refine pewter.

Take fine pewter, melt it in a crucible. When done, project over it at several times some nitre till you see it calcined. Then pound it into powder, and mix-it with an equal quantity of charcoal pulverised very fine. If, in this condition, you melt it again, it will resume its form of pewter, only refined in a much superior degree.


LXXI. To make a perpetual motion.

Take aquafortis, in which you will throw some steel, filings well dried. Leave this mixture to lay for six or eight hours. Then pour out the aquafortis in another bottle, in which you will throw a finall loadstone of good quality, and stop it well that no air get in. You will observe a perpetual motion.


LXXII. A secret fire.

Have a barrel open by one end, and pierced with a dozen of holes oh the other. Put in it three or four bushels of oat straw cut very fine, as that which is given, to horses. Get next half a bushel of barley, which shall have soaked for three days in lime water, and drained in a sheercloth of all the water which can run out of it. Place this wet barley in a lump over the oats' straw, then cover it with other similar cut draw, and let it rest till the time that, when you thrust your hand in it, you feel it warm. I his heat you may keep up by throwing, with a gardner's watering-pot, about half a pint of water every other day


LXIII. An oil, one ounce of which will last longer than one pound of any other.

Take fresh butter, quick lime, crude tartar, and common salt, of each equal parts, which you pound and mix well all together. Saturate it with good brandy, and distil it in a retort over a graduated fire, after having adapted the receiver, and luted well the joints.


LXXIV. To make a ccppel with ashes.

Take equal parts of the ashes resulting from vine-branches, mutton-bones, and harts' horns burnt and calcined. Moisten them with a little common water, then press them very hard in a mould called Coppel. Then take ashes from the jaws and teeth of a jack, which you put over the other ashes to the thickness of a crown piece, pounding well these also over the others as hard as you can. These last ashes serve to set off clean the grain of the metals you are telling on them. The harts-horn ashes serve to bind, or unite, those of vine-branches and mutton-bones together, and to dgaw down at the same time the lead. You must use eight times as much lead as the composition, you want to test by the coppel, weighs.


LXXV. To solder iron, or any other metal, without fire.

Take one ounce of ammoniac, and one of common, salts; an equal quantity of calcined tartar, and as much of bell-metal, with three ounces of antimony. Pound well all together and sift it. Put this into a piece of linen, and inclose it well all round with fullers' earth, about one inch thick. Let it dry, then put it between two crucibles over a slow fire to get heat by degrees. till the lump contained in the crucibles become quite red hot, and melt all together. Then let the vessels, and the whole, cool gradually and pound it into powder.

2. When you want to solder any thing, put the two pieces you want to join on a table, approaching their extremities as near as you can one to another. Make a crust of fullers' earth so, that holding to each piece, and passing under the joint, it should be open over it on the top. Then throw some of your powder between find over the joint. Have again some borax, which put in to hot wine till this is consumed, and with a feather rub your powder at the place of the joint; you will see it immediately boiling. As soon as the boiling stops, the consolidation is made. If there be any roughness you must smoothen it by rubbing with a grinding-stone, for the file will have no power over it.


LXXVI. To solder with fire.

Make a paste with pulverised chalk and gum-water, whirh you will put round the two broken pieces placed on a table, and prepared as before mentioned in preceding receipt. The only difference is, that you are to rub over the two united extremities with melted soap; and, after having thrown some of the above powder at the place of the joint, you are to hold a kindled piece of charcoal over it. This will immediately set the matter in fusion; which is no sooner done but you may take off the paste, and you will find it consolidated.


LXXVII. To make Borax.

Take two ounces of rock-alum; dilute it and mix it with two ounces of alkaline salt which is used in making, of glass. Put all into a pewter pot, and set it a-doing, for the space of half an hour, over a gentle fire; then take it out of the water. Take next two ounces of gem salt in powder, as much, of alkaline salt, two pounds of virgin honey, and one of cow-milk. Mix well all together, and set it in the sun for three days. Then the borax is done.


LXXVIII. To render iron as white, and beautiful as silver.

Take ammoniac salt in powder, and mix it with an equal quantity of quick lime. Put them all together into cold water, and mix well. When done, any iron piece, which you shall have made red hot, will, if you steep it in that prepared water, becoms as white as silver.


LXXIX. To calcine pewter, and render it as white, and as hard, as silver.

Melt well your pewter in a crucible, so that it may be very fine and clear. Pour it afterwards into a very strong vinegar, then into mercurial water. Repeat that operation as many times as you please, you will each time give it an additional degree of hardness and whiteness, drawing near to silver; so much that it will, at last, be very difficult to distinguish it from silver itself.


LXXX. Another to the same purpose.

Make again a good lye with vine-branch ashes and vinegar. Throw in it your pewter when in fusion. Repeat this seven different times. - Have next force new goat's milk in which you shall have added some white arsenic in powder. Melt your pewter again; then throw it in this preparation. Repeat twelve times the same; and the pewter will become as hard and as white as silver.


LXXXI. To whiten brass.

I. Take rosin and saltpetre, equal quantities. Pound all in a mortar, and reduce it into an impalpible powder. Put this into an earthen pan made red hot, and thus burn the matter. As soon as done, you must wash, and dry it; then grind it again well into an impalpable powder as before, with the addition of an equal quantity of auripigment. Then put all this into a crucible, cover it with another well luted and having a little hole in the top, whidi you will stop by laying only a medal on it. When calcined take what you will find clear in the bottom, not what will have sublimed on the top. Make a very fine powder of this matter; and, with one single ounce of that powder, you will be able to whiten two pounds of brass, in proceeding about it as follows.

2. Melt first your brass as usual; and, when in good fusion cast it into very good vinegar; an operation which you must repeat three times. Then, when you melt it for the fourth time, you are to project on it, as we said before, one ounce only (if you have two pounds of brass) of the said powder, which will render your brass as white as silver. - N. B. To melt the brass with more facility there are some who throw in the crucible a certain discretionable quantity of mice-dung; and I recommend to do the same. It will be found of no small serviee, in hastening the fusion of that metal.


LXXXII. An other method.

Brass, copper, iron or steel may also be easily whitened by means of the butter from Cornwall tin, or pewter, prepared with sublimate, proceeding as follows.

Take Cornwall pewter, about one pound; add to it half that quantity of sublimate. Set it on a strong fire, and sublime. The first water which sublimes is not good, throw it away. The second is good, which you know by its white colour. Now, if you make a piece of copper, brass, steel, or iron, it does not signify which, red hot, and steep it in that water, it will become as white as silver.


LXXXIII. To extract gold from silver.

1. Melt, whatever quantity you please, of lead, in, crucible, over a fire of clear and bright live-coals. Have at the same time in fusion an equal quantity of sulphur. Then take your first crucible, in which the lead is melted, off from the fire; and, before the lead shall congeal, throw in the same quantity in weight of quick silver. Stir and mix well this with a stick. When this is done, pour now your sulphur, from the other crucible, over the mixture of lead and quicksilver you have just made, & which coagulates, continually stirring carefully the matter with a spatula, for fear the sulphur should blaze and be consumed before it is all poured in. When the whole is come quite cold, grind it on a marble table with a mullar. Then put all again into a crucible over the fire, and leave it in fusion till all the sulphur is burnt out, and the matter be fluid enough to be cast in an ingot. This will look like the regulus of melted antimony. It will have even its brittleness.

2. Reduce now this composition into powder; and, with an equal quantity in weight of it and of silver laminas, make strata super strata of them, alternately, in a crucible beginning and ending always with the powder. Then, over the last bed, put about half an inch thick of Venetian glass, or crystal, reduced into an impalpable powder. Observe however that the crusible should not be filled so near the brim as to let the glass boil over. Make a fire strong enough to melt both the matters and the glass, and set them thus in fusion all together for a good hour at least. Then take off, and let cool, your regulus, in breaking your crucible, make a coppel, or teil, in which you will put lead in fusion, till it is as fluid as it can be. Throw in your regulus to purify it by thattest in the same manner as silver-smiths do. When your silver shall be fallen to the bottom very pure, put it in laminas or granulate it; then put it to dissolve in aqua fortis. You will see some small particles precipitating from it, in the form of black powder. It is fine gold. Wash these in warm water, then put them in fusion, in a crucible, and you will have very true, and good pieces of gold, fit for any of the chymical physics, and capable to stand any test whatever you may put it to.