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> > Inquarts - Silver
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Inquarts
are typically pieces of cut wire that contain a precise amount of
silver. They can be lead-silver alloy wire, or pure silver wire. |
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In the Fire
Assay parting step, in order to ensure complete parting without breaking
up the gold button, assay beads containing too little silver must have
additional silver added. Adding this additional silver is called
inquartation. Usually a total of four or five times as much silver
as gold is required. Old time assayers believed that the best
alloy for parting contained one-fourth gold and three-fourths silver.
The literal translation of the Latin word for parting, quartatio,
is "fourthing" |
| The well
stocked assay laboratory will have inquarts with various weight of
silver available to allow for fast and accurate addition of additional
silver. The precision (reproducibility of silver weight) in the
inquarts is more important that the exact weight of contained silver.
Typically, a blank will be run to determine the exact amount of silver
added. |
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Direct Link to this page:
http://www.lmine.com/go.mvc?id=inquarts |
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