Workflow and Safety Protocol for [Aluminum Bronze (?)]

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Recipe:

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<head>To make bronze the color of gold</head>

<ab>Take <m>copper</m> filings, <m>ochre</m>, <m>gum</m>, and <m>alum</m>, grind it all together in a <m>stone</m> mortar, and when it is well ground, lay it as needed with a paintbrush, and then polish it with m>wolf tooth</m> or <m>dog tooth</m>.</ab>

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Materials Needed:

Material

Source

Copper Filings

Copper Powder

Lab Inventory:

Cu Foil, 2, 25ft; NE

Art Molds

Yellow Ochre

Lab Inventory:

5 g, burgundy yellow

Gum

Gum arabic

Lab Inventory:

Alum

Aluminum Sulfate

Potassium Aluminum Sulfate

Lab Inventory:

1 lb; NE

750 g; SE

Dogtooth

Tools Needed:

Tool	Source
Stone Mortar	Lab Inventory:
Paintbrush	Lab Inventory:
Painting Surface	Lab Inventory: Gessoed Panel

Workstation Setup (where will you work? how will your workstation be prepared?):

Illiminate all sources of fire
Inside Fume hood
Mortar and Pestle, spatula, paintbrush to one side
Copper powder,

Outline of your Experiment (what will be your workflow, start to finish? ):

Based on the comparable recipe from Simone de Monte Dante, I would consider this a modified gilding technique, meaning that it needs much more copper filings than other ingredients (which I consider to be primarily the adhering agents). Therefore I would like to create a proportion of 4:1 copper filings to other ingredients. I am not certain what form of copper I will use yet and thus a certain level of this must be estimated in real time with regards to
Procedure:

Place stone mortar inside of fume hood

Remove all sources of fire or spark

Measure out a quarter sized amount of copper powder using small spatula and place in mortar
Measure out 1/4th a quarter size (estimated by eye) of yellow ochre, gum arabic, aluminium sulphate
Grind ingredients together for 5 minutes, taking note of color change, texture change, heat production, etc.

If after 5 minutes the ingredients are not well incorporated and there is no obvious change in color, continue grinding for another 5 minutes

Check consistency of mixture with small, flat paintbrush

Will the gum make the mixture too thick? Perhaps we will need to suspend in distemper or oil.

Transfer mixture to small plastic container
Use paintbrush to apply to one square on gessoed panel
Check change in color, texture, etc periodically

Variables

Vary the source/ purity of copper
Vary the types of gum (arabic, tragacanth,
Vary the type of alum

Could we potentially vary the source of aluminum to organic matter with higher aluminum content

Vary dogtooth
Vary proportion of ingredients

Perhaps we mix ingredients separately: alum and copper and yellow ochre; gum and yellow ochre, then apply gum and place copper mixture on areas where applied.

Vary the amount of grinding time

MATERIAL 1: Copper (powder)