Every time I watch any of the Business Insider videos (and I know I've been posting a lot of them of late - blame the YouTube algorithm for recommending them and BI for making them fascinating), I'm tempted to buy one of the item. It's not that I need an aranmula kannadi in any way. It's just that I find the process fascinating and want to reward the craftspeople who still make things by hand.
There's not a ton of material science here, but it does show a far less industrial version of casting an alloy.
Interestingly they don't seem to mix the alloy components (mainly tin and copper but a trade secret as to the proportions and actual ingredients) other than in turning the molten metal upside down into the mold. I would be very curious to see if the mirror had a homogeneous composition throughout.
It's also fascinating to me to think of this process being developed bit by bit over centuries. Small steps like the cooling of the mold with mud, the covering of the mold in carbon to fill in microscopic pores, and onward must have been done at some point by trial and error and kept in the process when they worked - assumedly discarded from the process when they didn't work - and I wonder how much of the process is like cooking a turkey.
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