Plated goods consist of metallic articles coated with a thin plate
of silver; the metal is made of a mixture of brass and copper, which
is cast into flat slabs or ingots about an inch-and-a-half thick,
the surface on one or both sides is filed flat and smooth, and a
plate of silver of about the thirtieth part of an inch thick, but a
little smaller than the metal, is applied smoothly to it, the edges
are covered all round with borax ground fine with water and the
plates tied tightly together with wire. The whole is then put into a
furnace and closely watched till the silver begins to melt, when it
is at once taken out and allowed to cool; by this mode of treatment
the silver adheres so firmly to the metal that they become as one
piece. It is then passed between steel rollers and rolled out to the
required substance, the silver and metal both becoming thinner in
about the same proportion, so that on a plate of metal, of whatever
thickness, the silver is somewhere about a fortieth or forty-fifth
part of its thickness; these plates of metal coated with silver are
worked by stamping, punching, or passing between rollers the edges
of which have mouldings, curves, &c., cut on them, and the parts
of each article when moulded are afterwards soldered together so
as to form what is intended. Wires of various forms are plated in
the same way and afterwards drawn out by means of draw-plates (see
“Wire-drawing”). Electro-plating has to a great extent superseded
this process (see “Electro-plating”).