124r - - - - - Hairy animals and very fragile and thin flowers
Hairy animals are difficult to mold because hairs raise up & come out looking intermingled & in clumps. At the beginning, it is necessary to keep it flat with a drying agent & that makes it firmer. And in this, the best thing to use is wheat oil, with which you will dawb it. Once cast, you will be able to repair it. The bodies of butterflies and herbs that have a stem & leaves that are flocked with capricious & downyhairs need to be daubed with the same oil to keep these flocks flat; likewise flowers that have very delicate & thin leaves because dry wheat oil makes them and rigid and firm. And if someone brags about molding anything presented to them, give them the downy head of the herb called dandelion to cast or a pappus, which comes from the seeds of burdock & takes flight at the slightest sigh of wind.
Noyaulx for molding hollow
Animals of gold & silver are generally cast hollow to avoid weightiness, and costs as well, if they are not quite small. But in order to make the core & the noyau, the mold needs to be freshly molded and not dry.
Spider web
It comes undone in water & because of this, cannot be molded in a noyau, but one casts the spider and then one draws the web filaments that they make in the fields stretched between blades of grass on some carton with a stylus. One makes around it an edge of paper, glued to the carton & one casts with tin mixed with very little lead.
Fine gold
There is a kind of gold which, even though it is very fine & unalloyed & has been passed through aqua fortis & antimony, is however so brittle that it hardly withstands the hammer. And the composition of verdigris mentioned above to make gold flow, makes it as doux as lead.