Pastry tong, fracture | silver alloy

The pastry tong (silver with approx. 13% Cu), probably well over 50 years old, was misused for squeezing tea bags 😉 and finally broke. The dark part of the fracture surface indicates an older incipient crack, thickly coated with sulfide. Another fracture was forcibly opened (Figs. 4 and 5). Numerous shrinkage cavities are noticeable in the fresh fracture part, with fresh ductile overload fracture in between.