126v - - - - - Crocum ferri
It is made more quickly from iron rust than filings, because if you have good vinegar, it will bubble on contact with rust as if it were boiling, as if it were on fire, if you use filings it will not bubble up unless it is placed on the fire or warm ashes. However when you have put your filings through vinegar, and it has evaporated, and heated up and made it very warm, should you do this all for a second time, the vinegar will be a lot stronger and your crocum will be much more subtle and red. Those who use it to cast in gold buy it for forty or fifty sols per ounce.
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It does not harden molds, and when you scrape the mold you cannot tell that it is harder. But it does make the mold more thinner, and it absorbs and attracts gold better.
Plaster
You can mold with it as large a piece as you wish. But if you make a mold upon large works and pieces of wood, it will not release cleanly unless you lather your wood with very hot wax. Because the wood absorbs and drinks, and because of this, it drinks up the plaster, which means it does not come out cleanly. You can assume the same thing will happen for any other large piece of wax. But the cure for this is to lather the work that you wish to cast in plaster with very hot wax. In this way, it will not absorb, and will release very neatly.
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If the plaster shrinks, it will always make flaws, look for harder plaster and rather than casting it, press your molds well.
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If it shrinks, it is not good plaster.
Plants that are difficult to burn in the noyau
Any herb that has a hard stem, like wood, is very difficult to burn in the noyau, such as asparagus, thyme, and other similar things, because they remain as solid coal in the small conduits, and if they are not reduced to ashes, it is not possible to remove them from the mold. In this case, some reheat them two or three times. Others in mixing some herbs together in the mold, pass through the herbs and the earth circle, which is there to receive the tempered sand.
This is not due to the fact that those herbs have stems with lines in them because rosemary burns well. This is due to the nature of certain herbs.
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