Making and Knowing
A minimal edition of BnF Ms Fr 640

[TOC] | [diplomatic]

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To tell someone that you will teach him something he does not know, and neither do you

Take a string or a small stick and measure from the tip of his ear to the tip of his nose and show it to him. Thus you will teach him something you did not know, and neither did he.

To support a bucket of water on the points of three knives laid flat without touching the ground

Figure Figure

According to the strength of your knives, either kitchen or table knives, you will make them support a large weight on their tips laid flat arranged in a triangle, edge to edge, as you can see, and not touching the ground. And after arranging them this way, if you turn them the other way without disassembling them, the handles can also support a large weight without touching the ground. You can as well adapt this to other uses with pikes, with timbers, or to quickly make a tripod in a camp with three halberd points. If the edge of the knife marked A is turned to the left, the butts of the handles will rise, but if the edge of the same knife is turned to the right, the tips will rise.

To boil an egg in cold water without a fire

Empty an egg from both ends so that nothing remains inside, then fill it with quicklime and natural sulphur, then plug the holes with wax and put it in water so that it floats two or three fingers above the surface.

To make rabbits come out of a burrow

Have some embers in a pot, and after putting sulphur on top, place it inside the burrows and block them with something light.