Making and Knowing
A minimal edition of BnF Ms Fr 640

[TOC] | [diplomatic]

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To soak sand

You need to have a big basin full of water to q soak the molds to open them, a tankard full of common water, a lead bowl for soaking your sand, a small wooden spoon to collect the soaked sand in the bowl. The big basin is pour tr

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To make handles for your large oil brushes, if you do not have large enough feather quills, take two of them, & split them & join them together.

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Decoction of sands

Already mentionned.

Molding en noyau. Mixture of sand

Having reheated your sand, namely the plaster, the alum de plume & the brick, & having passed them finely through the sieve #, mix them this way, take four parts of plaster, two of brick, & one of alum de plume. Mix them all together with your hands, qu’il in such a way that one cannot discern one from the other. With your sand ready, you need to kill the animal that you want to mold de in this way.

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# except for the alum de plume which should be ground in a mortar.

Killing the animal to be molded

It is necessary that you be scrupulous to not wound it at all in taking it. And having put it in a glass bottle d with some bran, or in a barrel full half full of fresh & damp earth, if you want to stock them or keep them a long time, give them live frogs & not dead ones to eat, for if you keep them without feeding them, they wither & grow thin, & have long wrinkled skins. Thus the best would be to mold it as soon as apres possible apre after it has been taken. But before, kill it in this way. Place it in a clean bottle or vessel so that it collects no dust. And put inside a sufficient quantity of good vinegar & urine so that it can be covered. And shake & torment it inside, until it is dead, which will be in on or a half hour. But if you are in a hurry

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To know if it is quite dead, take it out of the vinegar and take it by the tail. If it moves it, do not mold it for it still has feeling, & when piercing it, it would retract & spoil the mold.

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Water snakes hardly bite.

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