003r - - - - - Counterfeit coral
+ One needs to first make the branches of wood or take a bizarre thorn branch, then melt a lb of the most beautifulclear pitch resin and put in one ounce of subtly ground vermilion with walnut oil, and if you add in a little Venice lake platte, the color will be more vivid, and stir everything in the resin melted over a charcoal fire and not of flame, for fear that the fire catches within. Next dip in your branches while turning, & if there should remain any filaments, turn the branch over the heat of the charcoal.
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Colophony is nothing other than resin cooked again. To do it well, take a leaded pot & melt the resin, & boil it over the brazier a good hour, & until it appears not to be thick, but clear & liquid like water & it easily runs & flows from the tip of a stick with which you grind it, & try it. Then pour it through a coarse canvas or a very light tammy cloth, in the manner that when pouring it falls into the strongest vinegar that you can find, for the vinegar gives it strength & prevents it from being so fragile. Reiterate this two or three times & it will be beautiful & well purified. For imitating your coral, you can mix a quarter part of mastic within your purified resin to render it more firm and more beautiful, & if you should take only a tear of mastic, it would be all the better, but it would be too long.
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Sulfur & vermilion makes the same effect.
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The coral made of gules red enamel endures the file and polishing.
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It is made like cement that is stronger mixed with crushed than of glass rather than with brick. Thus one mixes here with the vermilion the gules red enamel, which is red in body, well ground. Thus with all colors of enamels.
Varnish for panels
Take a lb of Venice turpentine & heat it in a pot until it simmers, and put in half a lb of the turpentine oil of the whitest you can find, and stir it all together well on a charcoal fire and take it off immediately. And elle it is done. But if it seems too thick to you, add in a little more oil. Similarly if it is too clear, you can thicken it by putting a little turpentine. Thus you will give it whatever body you want. It could be made well without fire, but, when heated, it is more desiccative. It is appropriate for panel paintings and other painted things without distorting the colors or yellowing. And it dries both in the shade and in the sun, and overnight, and during the winter as well as in the summer. It is usually sold 15 sols a lb.
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A little more turpentine than turpentine oil is needed in order to give body to the varnish, which needs to be applied with finger in order to spread it thinner and less thick, for when it is thick, it turns yellow and sticks. One does not varnish to make paintings shine, for it just takes the light out of them.
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But it is used to enhance colors which have soaked in and to keep them from dust. Mastic varnish does not resist rain, whereas that of oil and rosin does.
Thick varnish for floorboards
There is a varnish that takes a long time to dry & still drips up to two months after it has been applied to the floorboards. But this one does not drip like the one used in the past, which was made of linseed oil boiled with garlic, to extinguish it & take out the fattiness, & with wheat. And this one yellowed & made the blue color of paintings greenish. This one is made like the other one except that one puts common thick turpentine
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