044r - - - - - 044r - - - - - The proportion of a fowling piece is: 4 king’s feet long and the bullet weights xviii pennyweights, the expulsion vi pennyweight of powder, its range iiii—by—xx pans and 3 and a half feet and two thumbs and around a line, which is the Paris aulne. The medium arquebuse, which is the usual one and the easiest, admits xv pennyweight of bullet, v pennyweight of powder & reaches lx paces.
They mix viii lb or ten of lead, per quintal of tin in cities where they are sworn masters. But elsewhere, they add as much as they can. One also uses ii lb of looking glass tin to bind it & three lb of debris, that is to say the copper shards that coppersmiths make. This makes the vessel more sonorous and it is not as breakable.
at left middle margin
This tin is called common tin.
To keep it from backfiring, clean your arquebuse every eight days, and rub it with oil, and when you draw out, wet some linen in oil & put it in instead of paper.
To test it, soak it & apply it to paper, & if one or two hours later it does not die there, it is fine and good.
Red poppies that grow amongst wheat make a very beautiful columbine on white leather. The boufain makes a very beautiful blue. An herb which grows in hedges, which has a stem similar to flax, long and broad leaves like little bugloss, which has a violet flower verging on blue and looks like the fleur de lys, makes a quite beautiful turquin, better than azure. Another columbine flower of the shape and size of the bugloss flower, which has a leaf like that of the pansy, also makes a very beautiful turquin. It grows in wheat in light earth.