116v - - - - - Casting snakes in all seasons
Snakes hide underground during winter. Some people feed them a lot in barrels filled with earth and covered with manure. Other people make several molds in summer because you can make four or five molds with one single snake. Other people cast long, natural snakes without coils, using common plaster, annealed as said, with a core and two half—molds. Then they cast it in wax, that way they have a snake as twisted as they want. Then they cast metal as it is said.
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If, while twisting your wax snake, some parts become undone, you can rework it if you remove the drips from the molded wax.
Tin and lead mixture
For fine herbs, flowers and greeneries. You need more than 3 parts of tin for one part of lead. If this material is thick and fat, you need 3 parts lead. Heat the mostly tin mixture, which must become red and very hot. When you want to cast, remove your crucible from the fire, and add two or three grains of resin for one and a half or two pounds of lead or tin. With the resin, also some fat looking—glass tin, the size of a hazelnut with its shell, mix and cast. Make sure you have more metal than you need; some metal should be set aside. If you haven’t enough metal, keep casting and finish your cast, it will set, however it will not be so neat. Dip your mold into water, and dismantle your mold carefully with a point. Make an elongated cast in order not to damage anything. If you mold something very thin, you must make your cast with mostly tin.
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If you want to cast lead or tin as a core with the sand above mentioned, reheat your mold once only if there is nothing to be burnt inside. But if there are flowers or animals to be burnt inside the mold, reheat it twice. However do not reheat the second cast for as long as the first cast for lead and tin. As for gold and silver, those must be red when you cast. For lead and tin, let them cool down until you can dip your finger into the cast without burning yourself. The cast must be warm.
Copper and tin casts
For red copper you must add sal ammoniac. It will clean it and remove the crust when melted. Some people add big pieces of new leather. Other add peels of mice feet. Other add melted common salt only, or salt melted with saltpeter. The main ingredients are sal ammoniac and also a little bit of tin, depending on the cast you want to do. Copper is harder to cast than tin. But when it is melted it runs better, even if alloyed with tin. Add a quarter of copper to tin and mix it like copper. Calamine especially makes it run well.