Dies Luna
Luna wn 90%v
Ritual openings/offering/communion as usual.
1.6g 24k gold combined with 1.6g .999 pure fine silver producing a 3.2g nugget of 50-50 alloy electrum (by weight).
I snipped up the 24k gold wire into fine (1mm or so) shreds, and in a bit of an excited hurry to combine it with the fine silver, I dug out a new pit in the charcoal block with the ball bur and put all the shreds of both metals in it. I also used a larger torch head since gold has a higher melting point than the silver.
Spent about an hour melting and turning, melting and turning the little blob of metal in an effort to get all the gold shreds to melt into the already soft/flowing silver. Looking back (and after doing a little more careful rereading of sources on the subject) I realize what I should have done is melt the gold to flow first, then add the silver chunks to the already-melted gold for better blending. It should also have been stirred.
Quenched and remelted a total of four times, coating all with flux for the final melt.
Observations:
Initially, the gold bits glowed red long before the silver even began to glow. Each held its form in individual shreds for quite a while, as the charcoal block grew hotter under constant flame.
The silver flowed, and the gold retained its integrity as red grains among a mercury-like flashing silver liquid drop. I intensified the heat and continued turning the bead until I watched all of the gold shreds lose shape and melt into the silver. On the final quench, it was apparent that all had melted together, but was not mixed evenly. There is a fine pale yellow sheen of varying intensity over the whole surface area of bright silver . It’s likely that most of the gold is concentrated in the center core, surrounded for the most part by a layer of fine silver.
It is beautiful, but it requires stirring. The metals are joined but not fully dissolved into one another.
Being in a hurry to do something exciting frequently makes more work. This time, I do not mind the more work part because looking at the little mirror-surfaced droplet rolling around on the charcoal was wonderful, watching one metal hold tension, then sigh and release into the other is pretty exciting. Fortunately I didn’t do anything that would even remotely ruin the $100+ of materials this time. When I get the carbon stirring rod and crucible, I’ll remelt it and stir the metals together for an even more thorough blend.
But still…. the best rule is to HASTEN SLOWLY! ( and read, re-read, re-read, and re-read again prior to jumping in).