Eunjangdo

[Ren Ren]

The problem is that "dohong" doesn't have a meaning in Korean. I had to strain to find out that "dohong" is a transcription of the Chinese term 烏銅 "wutong", which means "crow's copper" or "black copper". According to the Chinese treatise, it is an alloy consisting of 100 parts of copper and 1 part of gold. Thus, the Korean dohong, the Chinese wutong and the Japanese shakudo are the same copper alloy in composition. But there are differences in processing technique. For example, in Korea, the black color of the finished product is obtained by etching in urine (aged for a long time in a closed vessel).
It is also very interesting that the information that objects made of this alloy can signal the state of health of their owner finds some experimental confirmation.

[Philip]

Originally Posted by Ren Ren

The problem is that "dohong" doesn't have a meaning in Korean. I had to strain to find out that "dohong" is a transcription of the Chinese term 烏銅 "wutong", which means "crow's copper" or "black copper". According to the Chinese treatise, it is an alloy consisting of 100 parts of copper and 1 part of gold. Thus, the Korean dohong, the Chinese wutong and the Japanese shakudo are the same copper alloy in composition. But there are differences in processing technique. For example, in Korea, the black color of the finished product is obtained by etching in urine (aged for a long time in a closed vessel).
It is also very interesting that the information that objects made of this alloy can signal the state of health of their owner finds some experimental confirmation.

Thank you for the interesting linguistic and technical information. A couple of comments:

The black color of the wutong / shakudo alloy is induced by a chemical process commonly called "pickling", the reaction causes a color change at the surface. Etching is the use of an acid to eat away (the English term "etch" is related from a Dutch word meaning "to eat") of the metal to create a pattern (contrived by the use of a resist like wax or shellac to block the corrosive effect in certain areas), or to dull a glossy surface, or to bring out the texture of the object by reacting with different constituent alloys (for instance, in revealing the structure of a damascus blade).

Regarding the alloy's use as a diagnostic tool -- somewhere in the past I read an article (can't remember where or when published) whose author stated that silver chopsticks were the norm at royal banquets because tarnishing during use could signal the presence of poison in the food.

[Ren Ren]

Originally Posted by Philip

Thank you for the interesting linguistic and technical information. A couple of comments:

The black color of the wutong / shakudo alloy is induced by a chemical process commonly called "pickling", the reaction causes a color change at the surface. Etching is the use of an acid to eat away (the English term "etch" is related from a Dutch word meaning "to eat") of the metal to create a pattern (contrived by the use of a resist like wax or shellac to block the corrosive effect in certain areas), or to dull a glossy surface, or to bring out the texture of the object by reacting with different constituent alloys (for instance, in revealing the structure of a damascus blade).

Thank you Philip! These are the subtleties of another language that you have to learn all your life. I have already added the term "picking" to my personal English-Russian glossary. It is curious that in Russian there is a very rare term "пикель" - "pikel", which comes from the English "pickle" and means the acid-salt solution used to treat hides before tanning.

[Ren Ren]

Originally Posted by Philip

Regarding the alloy's use as a diagnostic tool -- somewhere in the past I read an article (can't remember where or when published) whose author stated that silver chopsticks were the norm at royal banquets because tarnishing during use could signal the presence of poison in the food.

After my post was published, I spoke with my friend from Germany and he said that the substance in urine that acts on the surface of copper alloys is ammonia. Its percentage and, if I may say so, "purity" are individual for each person, so the resulting color shades can vary quite a lot.

I also learned that silver reacts quickly with arsenic. Probably arsenic was the most common poison in antiquity. Therefore, the use of silver chopsticks in Korea as indicators of the presence of poison may have reasonable grounds.

[DaveA]

Thank you Ren Ren for the information. Some very good leads to follow. I recently started a new thread not having seen all the information in this one.

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...74832#poststop

My Eunjando:

[JoeCanada42]

very cool knife, I found many videos about eunjangdos on youtube, they were fun to watch, i linked some already