Crthuky

Assume a guy who has a lump of silver, and need to get it really small. Ideally down to dust level, if possible.

The techlevel of the society around him is comparable to late-roman (200-400 A.D).

From my research I already know, that they had no real steel, but high quality iron for the use in tools.

How can he produce tiny fragments of metal from a solid chunk?

• Will heating the chunk help?


• What about other (harder) metals, like platinum or tungsten? Any chance with that?

Well one way they could do it is to use a file, essentially tool-steel bar with an abrasive surface, and rub it against the surface of an ingot of silver. This would produce a relatively fine powder though it would be a painfully long process to get a lot of it.

Another option is to dissolve some sliver in Aqua Regia, a mixture of hydrochloric acid and nitric acid. Adding urea will then consume the residual nitric acid and ferrous sulphate to precipitate fine silver powder which can be filtered out of the solution. Assuming the Romans had access to these chemicals, they could use them in order to create a very fine silver powder. One thing to note, silver is resistant to Aqua Regia at room temperature, in order for the sliver to be broken down the temperature, pressure or concentration of acid must be changed. Here is a link to an answer on Chemistry.SE which explains it.

Several possibilities:

• You could heat the silver, beat it into a thin plate, and then cut it into small pieces using scissors or a knife.


• You could probably use a file or iron or stone to grind the silver to dust, since silver is less hard than iron, not to mention stone.


• You could melt the silver and make it drip into water and collect the droplets.

Roman age? I can give you a stone age method: Grind it between two rocks.

Silver has a mohs hardness of 2.5. Granite has a mohs hardness of 6-7. So you can use a rough granite stone to grind silver to dust. It might take a while and take some muscle, but it should work.

When you are lazy, you might try to just throw your silver into a grain mill. It should work if the millstones are from a mineral which is harder than silver. The romans had had water mills since the 1st century.

Cupellation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cupellation

Cupellation is the process of heating ores to separate noble metals (silver, gold, etc) from them. Silver is pretty reactive so finding silver by itself in nature is kind a hard so you are more likely to find it bonded with something like lead.

If your silver is still one solid chunk then all you need to do is heat it in a furnace and then cut or hammer it into smaller pieces. Or pour the molten silver into multiple canals that lead to multiple molds. Silver is a pretty easy metal to work with compared to iron and the Romans where already knowledgeable in iron working (Celts were better smiths however)

Smelting silver and silver working has been around since the bronze age so to someone with Roman tech smelting silver is a easy process. Heck the Romans where able to make alloys like pewter.