[Blog Post] The use of scissors and penknife in the Voynich Manuscript

[Anton]

So, a brief summary, as promised.

Firstly, Wladimir argues that there are many places where folios have been trimmed by scissors, with the shape of the cut such as if made by tails (nibs) of the blades. From the latter observation Wladimir concludes that the trimming was made when the book was in closed state - the observation which I find problematic because some folios have apparently been "excessively" trimmed - e.g. folio 90 which is the first in the row of Wladimir's examples. Such excessive trimming is impossible if the book is closed - you can't trim farther than the pack of sheets allows you.

Next, Wladimir considers bifolio 33-40 and shows that this bifolio was trimmed after the stitching was done, because the direction of trimming for f33 and f40 is the same - towards the stitching. This would not have been the case for an unstitched bifolio.

There are cases when consecutive folios are trimmed in different directions, such as with f46 and f47, and there are cases when two pages were trimmed simultaneously, such as f95r1 and f95v2 which were trimmed together in folded state.

Next Wladimir discusses the possibility that the bifolios as we know them are in fact parts of larger sheets which were cut (separated) into the present state after the drawings were done.

Next Wladimir considers some examples where trimming was done by a knife, not by scissors.

Then Wladimir explores the issue of missing folios. He argues that f109-110 are not simply "missing", but have been deliberately cut out with a knife, judging by the accidental cut in f108 and some other traces (which I personally fail to recognize).

Folio 12 was first attempted to be cut off with scissors, and then the process was finished with a knife.

Folio 15 was trimmed by a knife, and the digit "5" was cut out, hence the need for the new pagination.

Wladimir suggests that there is the trace of the foldout close to the outer edge of f96 which suggests that the outer page was cut out from what had initially been a foldout. This idea is corroborated with the fact that the number 96 is written by a different hand - which would be the case when the pagination needs to be restored.

Finally, Wladimir suggests that folios 12, 74, bifolio 109-110 and Q12 were deliberately cut out all at the same time, presumably for sampling. Wladimir keenly observes that all these cases are united by that the respective folios were central folios of quires - which made it easy to remove these folios without much damaging neither themselves nor what remained in the book.