039r - - - - - Goldsmith
They assemble silver filings with saltpeter which refines it & does not make it brittle. But gold filings are assembled with borax or, to spare the borax, with lead, which refines the gold & softens it, for the saltpeter would make it brittle, which silver does not do. This is why, to save money, goldsmiths use it to assemble, in order to spare borax, which costs viii sols per ounce, & saltpeter x sols per lb.
When goldsmiths have thus assembled their silver filings with saltpeter, a red enamel vitrifies at the bottom of the crucible. I do not know if the copper mixed in with the silver is the cause. Try for enamel.
Pastel woad
It is grown in Lauragais where the deep soil is so fertile that if wheat was grown there every year, it would lie flat for being too vigorous. This is why one alternately does pastel woad and wheat there. For the cultivation of pastel woad, one works the soil with iron shovels, as gardeners do. Next, one harrows it with rakes, & breaks it up finely as for sowing cooking herbs. One commonly sows it on Saint Anthony’s day in January. One makes eight harvests of it. The first ones are better. The best pastel woad of Lauragais is the one from Carmail & the one from Auragne. And sometimes the pastel woad is good in one field & in the one close by it will hardly have worth. The goodness of the pastel woad is known when, put in the mouth, it gives a taste as of vinegar, or when crumbling & breaking it, it has some mold—like veins which are as if golden or silver. One assays it in the dyers’ vat, and to fill a vat with it, one needs six balls of it. One dyes several locks of wool, and if it dyes fifteen times, it is said to be 15 florins, if it gives xx dyings, xx florins. The good kind dyes up to 30 times & commonly up to xxv or 26.