The Modern Forgery Hypothesis

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To claim that Voynich obtained all that quanity of unused vellum from the early 15th century cut into the range of sizes he required is unlikely and from his knowledge unnecessary to make a convincing forgery prior to the invention of carbon dating.

This is a logical fallacy, and easily explained as such by giving a hypothetical: Say the Voynich was not approximately 6"x9", but, for instance, 8"x11". Would it be correct to say, as you did, that this was the "range of sizes he required"? Of course not, it was the "range of sizes" he either had at hand, or chose to make.

An allegory would be watching an ape throw paint at a wall, then analyzing the results and presuming the ape must have had great genius, because there would be no other explanation for the forms that resulted. No, those forms were the result of pure happenstance.

Likewise, the resulting size of the leaves and bifolia of the Voynich can be explained by chance. It is a mistake to assume that he must have wanted the size it turned out to be, and then claim it unlikely he just happened to come across that necessary, and desired size. That is illogical. The size of the Voynich can have been entirely dictated by the parchment which was on hand.

That being said (and for those who have seen this, I apologize), I think it entirely possible that Voynich didn't find the size we see... quarto, or octavo (close to both, a big octavo, or smaller quarto), but rather cut the leaves down from full folio size sheets. The reason I believe this plausible are:

1) It would explain the foldouts, as those all fit in the size of full folio sheets, and even each have fold lines falling on folio-sized bifolios.
2) The quire numbers are not centered, as is usual (Clemens, "Medieval Manuscript Studies"), but rather off-set. If one cut down folio sized bifolios which were pre-numbered (as was sometimes the case), the quire numbers would no longer be centered on the leaves.
3) Dana Scott, and others, have reported several of the edges are much brighter, and looked more recently cut than the other edges
4) Scars and other markings seem to line up across leaves, as though they came from larger sheet. Pelling explains this as those leaves coming from the same hide; I posit it could, in addition to his idea, mean they were cut from larger sheets.

Anyway, no luck was necessary, only for Voynich to have found a pile of old vellum, of any size, of any age, and then create a fake manuscript from that. Which is what I think he did. I don't think he or anyone had a plan they were trying to follow, I mean, and then got "lucky" in finding "just the right" age and size materials to pull it off.

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Rich.