Ironwork in Medieval Britain: An Archaeological Study (SOCIETY FOR MEDIEVAL ARCHAEOLOGY MONOGRAPHS)

I received my copy of  Ironwork in Medieval Britain: An Archaeological Study (SOCIETY FOR MEDIEVAL ARCHAEOLOGY MONOGRAPHS) by Ian H. Goodall today, other than NOT being a hard cover as listed, I am quite pleased with the book so far.  It is like a recipe book of 'anything' iron (anything except armor, weapons, and spurs, lots of other books for those!). It is filled with page after page of line drawings and measurements of just about anything you can think of.  Lots of things that I would like to try and make, my 'multiple hobby disorder' really kicks in when viewing things like this.......

Verge and Foliot clock face

Got part of the face gear set up done today, more pictures in the Clock 2 page

New tool!

My son and a friend found me an early birthday present! such a fun toy!

Thanks guys!

As you can see by the mess all around it we tried it out.  Amazing how many things we could find that needed grinding or sharpening!

Argol flux

Experimenting with recipes from Theophilus again!  Flux for soldering this time.  He says to burn argol and then grind it with salt and water.  Argol I found, are the crystals which form during wine making (tartaric acid) and build up inside of the wine casks and sometimes on the corks of wine bottles.  I looked around online and found out that burning it basically turns it into potash, the same thing that happens when you burn cream of tartar, which is the neutralized form of tartaric acid, it has a potassium salt attached to it.  ( I could be all wrong about this, I am not a chemist!) So I grabbed some cream of tartar to use instead of argol.  ( I am going to try and get some, 2 wineries located near me)

I put it in a crucible and heated it until it stopped smoking.  It did become a solid-ish mass and did need breaking/grinding up when I added the salt and water. He never says how much salt, so I added 'some'. heh.  About 1/3 as much as the burnt stuff I suppose.... 

It was very black not at all what I am used too for a flux, but when I tried it with some silver solder on a piece of copper it worked!  It eventually cleared like borax and the solder flowed.

I will have to get back to this at some point and try it out some more, but the clock is taking up most of my time.