De La Pirotechnia
The work is one of earliest technical manuscripts to survive from the Renaissance, and is thus a valuable source of information on technical practice at the time of writing. The work was printed in 1540 in Venice, and has been reprinted numerous times.
It is divided into ten books dealing with minerals, semi-minerals, assaying, smelting, the separation of gold from silver, alloys, the art of casting metals (especially bells and cannons), and alchemy. He describes in detail the way moulds are made for casting so as to avoid defects, including the way patterns are made for the final product shape.
Read more about this topic: Vannoccio Biringuccio