Lute (material)

Lute (from Latin Lutum, meaning mud, clay etc.) was a substance used to seal and affix apparatus employed in chemistry and alchemy, and to protect component vessels against heat damage by fire; it was also used to line furnaces. Lutation was thus the act of "cementing vessels with lute".

In pottery, luting is a technique for joining pieces of unfired leather-hard clay together, using a wet clay slip or slurry as adhesive. The complete object is then fired. Large objects are often built up in this way, for example the figures of the Terracotta Army in ancient China. The edges being joined might be scored or cross-hatched to promote adhesion, but clay and water are the only materials used.

Lute was commonly used in distillation, which required airtight vessels and connectors to ensure that no vapours were lost; thus it was employed by chemists and alchemists, the latter being known to refer to it as "lutum sapientiae" or the "lute of Wisdom".

The earthen and glass vessels commonly employed in these processes were very vulnerable to cracking, both on heating and on cooling; one way of protecting them was by coating the vessels with lute and allowing it to set. One mixture for this purpose included "fat earth" (terra pinguis), Windsor loam, sand, iron filings or powdered glass, and cow's hair.

Another use for lute was to act as a safety valve, preventing the buildup of vapour pressure from shattering a vessel and possibly causing an explosion. For this purpose, a hole was bored in the flask and covered with luting material of a particular composition, which was kept soft so that excessive buildup of vapour would cause it to come away from the vessel, thus releasing the pressure safely. This process could also be performed manually by the operator removing and reaffixing the lute as required. Lute was also used to effect repairs to cracked glass vessels. In The Alchemist’s Experiment Takes Fire, 1687, one alembic is exploding; the luting used to seal a receiving bottle to another alembic can be seen behind the alchemist's upraised arm.

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