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Making counterproofs

Make some soap water & with this, rub & moisten the
engraved piece that you want to counterproof from, then lay white
paper on it & rub very vigorously across the top with a
tooth or the bottom of a glass & you will
transfer your stamped piece. It is true that it will be in reverse, but
if you oil your paper with spike lavender&or turpentine oil, it will show
reverse the right way around on the other side. Then follow
these lines with a pinceau or a quill, then heat the
paper & the oil will go away & leave your
paper white. And if you want this not to be known, if, by chance,
you borrowed the piece, moisten the paper and the polishing that
the burnisher has made on the back, which shows what has been
done, will not be known. The soap water will turn the piece
yellow, but well-gummed water, which has the same effect, does
not do this. If you want to, for the same effect, make gummed
water, then mix some soap in it & do as is said.


Cutters of printing plates

To clean the copper plates, or to have worn ones
print better, boil them for four or five good hours
in a good lyewith lye which is quite
spent. Then make your ink with some linseed
oil & not with walnut oil & press with the
rollers. The copper plates are sooner made than
wood blocks, but they are not so appropriate for
printing promptly. The wood ones are laborious but also will
sooner have printed twenty sheets than the other will have done two. To
carve in wood, the secret is firstly to poach, that is to say to
lay the counterproof or drawn piece onto the wood block
& to make sure that the side with the traced line is stuck to the
wood. Once dry, you then gently rub with a moist
handkerchief the back of the paper which, by rubbing, will
become so delicate that almost only the line will remain, which, next,
one follows in cutting the surface. You could do this with historiated
glass & coat with noir d’escaille, to then scrape
& layer your colors on the uncovered area. To make ink for
copper plates


These rollers are good for printing promptly with cut
cartons different kinds of pastes.


One can place the plates among the linens when the
lye is quite fine, or also in a pot.

