Metalworking Recipes and a Gold Knot Design
Etching pierced steel, a water-flask lens, sunbeams and Latin notes on motion
The verso of the folded sheet is densely covered with metalworking and decorative-craft recipes: gluing thin strips onto leather, stamping and etching, and the making of a gold interlace 'knot' set on a black velvet ground, with tacks hidden in a deepened central square. Detailed instructions describe hollowing a tempered-steel plate into a pierced die, striking a thin brass plate against it, and finishing with a file-wheel and brass scraper. Scattered among these are optical and mechanical notes: that two sunbeams cannot intersect, a very thin water-filled glass flask used as a spectacle-grinding lens, a candle nourished within a transparent tube, wave reflection shown by concentric circles, and Latin scholastic notes on motion drawn from Aristotle's Physics. Further writing on the sheet lies beyond what is transcribed.
On this page
A gold knot on a black velvet ground
The square in the middle of the knot is made deeper than the others to hide the tack-head, then tinted black and varnished; the rest of the ground is black velvet with a knot of gold, so the squares need not be cut out. It can be worn down with a wheel-file 'as razors are made', then scraped bright with a brass scraper.
Etching and stamping a pierced steel plate
The design is cut into tempered steel, the cutter changed two or three times until the steel is a pierced plate; set on the anvil, a thin brass plate and thin lead are laid on and struck 'at castello' over the center. The brass relief is then filed down from the reverse with a large file-wheel or stone.
Sunbeams cannot intersect
Beneath the drawing of a file-wheel a maxim states that it is impossible for one ray born of the sun to intersect with another ray born of the sun. It stands as an optical principle among the metalworking recipes.
A water-filled glass flask as a lens
Let a b c d be a very thin glass flask, blown in a plaster mold holding the impression of a lead for grinding spectacles for those of 60 years, a finger thick at the ends and half a finger in the middle, and filled with water. It is a magnifying lens formed from a shaped, water-filled vessel.
Nothing moves without a fixed support
A movable body that does not move by its feet, yet does not change place in the air, must be in a boat or in a wind moving with it. Nothing takes of itself motion, leap or progressive bounce without a fixed point of support.
Scholastic notes on motion (Aristotle's Physics)
Latin notes hold that action and passion are founded on motion, that all motion is measured by time, and that motion is the act by which the movable body is moved; if motion is to exist, the movable and the mover must first exist. The passage cites the 2nd comment on the 8th book of the Physics.
