[TOC] | [diplomatic]

Cleaning the bowl and the spoon that one uses to temper sand

Be very careful to clean, vigorously & quickly after casting, your bowl & your spatula or spoon with which you temper your sand, because if it dries, it crumbles & falls into the fresh sand & makes a hole or fault get made. Also, when the mold gets reheated, these little pieces will chip & flake off & prevent neat casting.

Molding hollow

Wax on its own cools down too rapidly & does not spread well everywhere, & tallow holds its heat & spreads everywhere; but is not good on its own. But when wax and tallow are mixed the work behaves well. The bodies of crawfish & other small animals can easily be molded hollow, but as for the legs, it will be troublesome.

at left middle margin

The first part of the mold that is first cast on the plate of clay, cracks more easily in the fire than the second.

Molding medals and flat things

You are not limited to making the gate with legs thus

Figure , but rather in this way Figure , which embraces the medal well. For the other way with legs is only done to accommodate more delicate works and the other, which is wide and in one piece works better for flat medals. But take heed that all gates need to be very thin close to the medal & so as to say not as thick as the medal, if it is not very thin like paper. And then, from the medal out towards the opening of the gate, make it thicker and thicker for it works better thus. If the gate is thick at the entry to the medal, the work never comes out very well. Make that despuys from the middle to the top of the gate be moderately thick, & from the same middle to the bottom very thin. Do not forget to makes grooves in au hau the top of your gate to prevent the metal from spreading furiously.