With the assistance of a "clever native writer", Bland used "well-made and soft dough" to take impressions of the characters on the slab to copy them. After an impression of each character had been made, the character itself in the stone was painted over with white lead, "as far as the eye could make it out, ... and if the two agreed, it was considered as nearly correct as possible, and although this was done to all the characters, it was more particularly attended to in the more obscure ones, for the letters marked in the facsimile with more strength could readily be copied by the eye." Bland also discovered that when the Stone was viewed "when the sun was descending in the west, a palpable shadow was thrown into the letter, from which great assistance was derived."