"Peter W.. Rowe," wrote:

On Sun, 26 Sep 2004 06:14:46 GMT, in rec.crafts.jewelry Jack Schmidling
wrote:

As a starting point, I melted some silver and poured it into a shallow sand
mold thinking that I could pound it into sheet metal but gave up in disgust.

You can do that. But it's a LOT of work. Before the invention of rolling mills,
this is how it was done.


Very nice examples of this can be seen in "Encyclopedie ou dictionnaire raisonne
des sciences, des arts, et des metiers", published under the direction of
Diderot and d'Alembert, 1750-1772

This was the first encyclopedia ever published. When I lived in Germany in the
70's I traveled to France regularly, since I lived only about 2 hours East of
Strasbourg. I would visit the antique book sellers there. I bought several of
the pages of those books relating to gold and silver smithing. I no longer know
where I have them. Unfortunately, I could never find a complete copy of that
work. When I asked the book sellers why that was so, I was told, that they were
much more valuable page by page. Whenever they would find a complete set, they
would rip it apart, and sell it page by page. Now you can only find the
originals in museums and luckily today they are also available on CD ROM.

Abrasha
http://www.abrasha.com