
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~041r~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Earth for casting, for founders

It renders itself fat once beaten and also mixed with
horse dung. Potter's earth would be
too fat and would crack & would not hold in the fire, but one needs
to mix it with half the quantity of sand and a quarter
or a fifth of horse dung. And leave
it to dry, then powder it, then sift it to render it fine &
cleansed, which would prevent it from casting neatly. The dung
renders the earth more amenable & easier to deal with, but it
is necessary that it be well free of straw & other things.
And when the earth is very fat, one needs to give it more sand
& more dung. But one does find fat varieties of earth,
themselves mixed with sand. If they are not, make them so artificially.
One always needs to reheat the earths before casting.


Garden lilly

If one breaks it at its first blossom & it will grow & bloom
only in the following year, & know the
bulbous plants do thus.


Sand

The sand chosen cast for casting should be neither so
lean that it has no stickiness, nor too fat. And even if it is found
in nature, however, it is not everywhere. And if you
are in a place where it is not found, you can make it, but not with
fat earth, for the sand does not want any of that, for it makes
it very porous. But you can make it bindable with brick well
ground on marble, or plaster or calcinated
alabaster or something similar, or the burned marrow of
ox horn or burned asphalt. If you grind it quite
finely on porphyry, it s acquires
stickiness better & then you can burn it with asphalt or mix
it with a quarter part of tripoli. Guard against
bread falling into your sand because it makes it very
porous.



Try mixing in soot black.


Ducks

Young domestic ones do not grow for a month
after they are hatched, but remain in this state. But after they quickly
grow, similarly if they go into the water. One feeds them with boiled
millet grains, crumbling them among bread
and spreading in well chopped lettuces.

