Traditional Spanish Coppersmiths (video)

[JHCC]

Enjoy. 

 

[Hefty]

Good find, thanks JHCC!

[Davor]

There is tradition like this in Bosnia as well. This year we were passing thru so we bought a traditional coffee pot made like this. I insisted that we buy from the craftsman making it and not from a tourist shop. Except the pot has a layer of tin or pewtr on the inside.

A lovely video and an exceptional channel, a wealth of old traditions preserved on it. Quite a few blacksmith videos. Thanks for the find.

[Frosty]

Thank you John, that is a very good watch and a dangerously deep rabbit hole menu. It brought back memories of metal spinning lathes, split tooling and trying to imagine how Dad would've made the pot. I've hammered a little copper and spun a little long ago, it has a distinct feel in either technique. 

Thanks again.

Frosty The Lucky.

[George N. M.]

Davor, the tin (traditional) or pewter lining indicates that the vessel was made for actual use and not just as a decoration in a tourist's home.  The tin protects the liquid in the pot from chemically interacting with the copper which can produce some fairly nasty by products.  Pure copper is probably OK for non=acidic things like water but anything with some acid content, like coffee, is potentially dangerous.  Sounds like you got a good one.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand."

[JHCC]

Copper can leach into non-acidic foods as well, and generally isn’t considered healthy for cooking vessels unless tinned (although not as dangerous as the old forms of pewter that contained lead). That said, French chefs traditionally use unlined copper bowls for whisking egg whites, on the theory that it makes for a more stable foam. 

[Frosty]

Copper oxides are toxic and acidic foods CAN be a problem. If the bowl is clean egg whites aren't acidic clean, pure copper might as well be stainless steel. There's lots of traditional beliefs, especially among chefs, whisking eggs in copper is probably how it was done in the dawn of the copper age so it's how they do now. "Brasso" (directions are on the bottle) deoxidizes copper and it's alloys so you won't poison yourself if you REALLY want to use copper for non-acidic foods. Brasso has been around for at least a century, we had a can under the sink as far back as I can remember. My Grandmother's angel food cake pan was copper and I got to polish it with Brasso when we were going to have her angel food cake. Mother made her special recipe chocolate sauce to go with.  Boy is that a tasty memory. 

Personally I use my Kitchen aid mixer with the Whisk head. It can turn a dozen eggs into meringue in a minute or so max. 

Tin plated is no doubt safest. Just because you CAN do a thing does NOT mean you should. No?

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[JHCC]

Shine your buttons with Brasso!
It's only three ha'pence a tin.
You can buy it or whip it from Woolworths,
But I don't think they've got any in.

 

 

 

[Frosty]

Whip it?  Is Woolworths still delivering by horse or oxcart?

Ahhhhh, I love a good typo, thanks for the morning smile.

Frosty The Lucky.

[George N. M.]

All US Army veterans of a certain age will have fond and not so fond memories of Brasso and Blitz Cloth.  Veteran tip:  Don't try to polish your brass while it is still on the uniform, although, if you want to run a risk you can slip a slotted card behind the brass but this is a bit risky.

GNM

[JHCC]

2 hours ago, Frosty said:

I love a good typo,

No, that’s the actual lyric. I’ll send you a link to the original song. 

[JHCC]

5 hours ago, Davor said:

There is tradition like this in Bosnia as well.

There’s a town in Mexico called Santa Clara del Cobre where something like 3/4 of the population works in the copper trade. Here are a couple of videos from there:

Note that while the contemporary smiths are using electric blowers, their forges are still outfitted with the old manual ones. These appear to be based on two leather accordion-folded bags mounted in vertical frames that are hinged at the bottom and with handles at the top. Here’s a close-up from a screen grab:

We’ve all seen dual manual bellows on Viking forges, African forges, and the like, but those are all worked up-and-down; I don’t think I’ve seen ones that work back-and forth before (other than Asian box bellows, but those are reciprocating within one chamber rather than alternating). I read an article somewhere that mentioned that the copper trade in this town predates the invasion by the Spanish conquistadores and that while the smiths were happy to adopt European steel hammers, they kept this bellows design because it was more efficient than the ones the Spaniards brought. 

[Frosty]

Thanks for the link John, it's a fun song. 

Frosty The Lucky.

[JHCC]

Here's a better photo of the traditional bellows:

PHOTO SOURCE

[wirerabbit]

Great original video, John. Did you notice that the charcoal forge used by the copper smith was an updraft, or were my eyes playing tricks on me?

T

[JHCC]

Sorry, in which video?

[wirerabbit]

Your original video. I spent some time looking through the channel of that Spanish documentarian to see if I could spot any other older charcoal forges, but I couldn't. I'm still trying to research the two piece cast iron tuyere I came across on the web

 

[JHCC]

Eugenio Monesma just posted another video showing a smith in Spain using this same kind of two-lung bellows. I’ve posted about that HERE.

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

On 10/8/2023 at 12:43 PM, George N. M. said:

not so fond memories of Brasso and Blitz Cloth

When I was in the USCG stationed on light stations (houses) the main light's brass had to be polished every three or four months. It usually took all day and even with gloves, my fingers would bleed. To add insult to injury the 50 pounds of mercury the lights rotating bearing surface had to be drained and strained to remove any trash once a year.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.
Semper Paratus

 

[LarryFahnoe]

Yikes! Sounds as though "mad as a hatter" ought to be expanded upon to include those that maintain the lights! Curious Randy, trying to visualize the mechanism, was the rotor floating on the mercury?

Although I didn't serve, I have visited the USCG LORAN station on Attu at the end of the Aleutian chain...an extremely remote and fascinating place to visit. I was fortunate to be able to go on one of the last trips run by a company providing trips for bird watchers & tramped about for a week amongst the remains of the remains of the US WWII sites. I did not make it over to the other side of the island where there were remains of the Japanese operations. An image that sticks in my mind is the shallows of the bay which were littered with all manner of stuff...apparently a handy dumping "ground" as shipments of war material were arriving so quickly that at times the only thing that could be done was to bulldoze excess into the sea. 

--Larry

[Irondragon Forge ClayWorks]

Yes the rotating light floated on the mercury, which acted as a bearing. The funny thing about cleaning the mercury was, the light station I was last stationed at had the last civilian light keeper in the USCG as the master. It was a family station and the keeper who was in his 80s and his wife, along with myself and my wife with two kids (who were both born while we were stationed there) were the only folks there.

When I was told the mercury needed to be strained, I wasn't told how heavy mercury was. When I removed the drain plug, holding the bucket with one hand the mercury came out so fast it took the bucket out of my hand and 50 pounds of mercury went down 133 steps to the main floor. It took me about three hours with a foxtail broom and dust pan to get all of the mercury back in the bucket and strained and back in the light in time for it to be lighted. Took me a while to live that one down.

I can't control the wind, all I can do is adjust my sail’s.
Semper Paratus

 

[LarryFahnoe]

A great story Randy & a far cry from playing with tiny puddles of mercury as a little kid! (yes, I know better now...)

--Larry

[Frosty]

Yeah, mercury is surprisingly dense, very close to gold. A coffee mug will hold about 10lbs. easy. In the early days of CB radio, Dad's handle was Prospector. We did a lot of prospecting and developing gold extraction machinery on a generally small scale a person could haul to a site in the trunk or a pickup truck. 

I spent a LOT of time messing with mercury as a youngster, until I moved to Alaska in 72. 

Mercury as an un-oxidized liquid isn't terribly toxic if you're careful but the old method of separating gold by boiling the mercury off and distilling it was B A D N E S S in spades. Old miners were often mad as a hatter. Literally.

"environmentalists" are always protesting any mining operation here. The claims are of all the mercury used processing and never a word about mercury recovery. If there's gold there's almost always mercury, it's not unusual to recover 2-3x as much as was used in the first place. And that mercury is already free in the environment, there are already many places where water is unsafe to drink for the heavy metals without a human's touch.

We'd demo at somebody's claim and they'd be bummed that the gold recovery was below break even, sometimes gold and silver together and ignore the fact that mercury was present way into the profitable range. Gold fever does funny things to people.

Sorry for the ramble it's early-ish and I have a Christmas present I'm dying to play with when it's light out.

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[George N. M.]

There is an old prospector trick for separating the gold/mercury amalgam.  Hollow out a potato and put the amalgam into the center.  Put the potato back together and bake it.  The mercury will vaproize and go into the potato flesh leaving the gold in the cavity.  Do NOT eat the potato.

GNM

[Frosty]

I know that one, another was to put a dent in a gold pan put your amalgam in the dent and cover with half a potato and cook it. 

Might as well eat the potato if you do this a couple times you'll start noticing the nerve and brain damage. Well, those around you will, it's the source of the crazy old minor "legend". 

We dissolved the amalgam in Nitric acid and reclaimed the mercury by precipitating it out with zinc dissolved in the solution. You only got a couple maybe 3 uses and the nitric was loaded with zinc. It was sure fun to watch the mercury ball covered in bubbles slowly shrink and leave a gold lint ball. Mercury fumes were released in this process but a small fraction of cooking it off.

Frosty The Lucky.