This section is from the book "A Practical Treatise On The Fabrication Of Matches, Gun Cotton, Colored Fires And Fulminating Powders", by H. Dussauce. Also available from Amazon: A Practical Treatise on the Fabrication of Matches, Gun Cotton, Colored Fires and Fulminating Powder.
Mr. Maynard, of Boston, has made a carious application of the pyroxyle obtained by Mr. Gaudin's process, by rendering it soluble in alcoholized ether. He designates this agglutinative solution by the name of collodion. He prepares it as follows: -
The cotton is dipped into a mixture of three parts of sulphuric acid and two parts of nitrate of potash. It is left to react for 15 minutes, washed and dried as usual.
According to Mr. Payen, the surest mode of preparation consists in mixing one part in weight of dried and powdered nitrate of potash, with three parts of concentrated sulphuric acid; he dips the cotton entirely into this mixture, and leaves it from 1 to 2 hours, washes and dries it.
The product dissolves incompletely in ether, containing 8/100 of alcohol; it forms a syrupy liquid which is kept in close vessels. Spread several times on the skin, it forms by the evaporation of the ether a very adherent pellicle, resisting alcohol and water. It offers thus a means, now generally used, to cover or reunite wounds, and takes the place of the English plaster. The pellicle obtained on a glass plate can be taken, and burns less quickly than gun cotton.
Collodion can be used to render tissues water-proof. Tissues covered with collodion can bo used to cover large wounds and keep them from the action of the air, as in drying it contracts and becomes hard. The solution used for this purpose is thus prepared: -
Ether . . . .90
Alcohol . . . .10 Pyroxylo . . . 2 to 3
Castor oil and turpentine . 1
For some time collodion has been a precious agent in surgery and medicine. It answers to a multitude of uses relative to certain wounds, ulcers, eye diseases, etc.
Thus, it is a remarkable circumstance, that a compound, the explosive properties of which seem destined to extend the list of the most terrible agents of destruction, presents in itself very little modified in its texture, one amongst the most efficient agents used in protecting the life of man.
M. Berard Touzelin has made several new applications of collodion, principally in the fabrication of artificial flowers and in book binding, and he has succeeded in economizing in these different applications two-thirds of the ether by concentrating the solution of pyroxyle and collecting the ether which becomes disengaged. He prepares his collodion in the following manner: -
Ether at 58° . . .100 Gun cotton * . . • 6 New castor oil • . 5 to 8
The solution being prepared while cold, he distils it over a water bath, so as to collect § of the ether. He leaves it to settle 8 or 10 days; decants the clear liquid, and adds the castor oil.
Very finely powdered different mineral colors can then be mixed with the solution, or coal tar colors can be dissolved in it The liquid thus colored is run on a glass perfectly level. The collodion solidifying it can be taken at once.
M. Berard obtains a perfect imitation of leaves of different plants, with the help of moulds taken from nature according to different processes, and principally by the help of the figuring while warm (about 200°). The moulds are prepared in the following manner: on its inferior face, i. e., the superior part of the limb outside, interpose carefully on it, plaster passed through a fine sieve, and mixed so as to take the stamp well. The lump of plaster having become of sufficient consistency, with a knife give it the form of a truncated cone, of which the extreme edges of the leaf represent the little basis; these edges are cut with a penknife to follow the denticulation of the leaf. The cone is dipped several times into a bath of melted wax ready to solidify (about 176°) till the thickness of the envelope is strong enough.
Put on a cloth plug a natural leaf, supported
* The gun cotton is prepared with nitrate of potash and sulphuric acid.
Dip it into cold water to increase the con-sistence of the wax, and diminish that of the plaster. Then strip the basin by taking out the conical mass of plaster.
This basin containing the leaf in the bottom is metallized with powdered plumbago. It is then put into a bath of sulphate of copper, and submitted, as usual, to the ordinary process of electro-metallizing, and in 8 or 10 days is deposited a bed of copper sufficiently thick; then take out the wax envelope and the leaf which covers the bottom of the copper mould. The mould is filled with melted bronze, and run into it while liquid, by engaging in it an iron rod which forms a handle; you obtain thus a matrice, of which you print under a strong pressure the embossments (nerves of the leaves) in a thick lead basin (alloyed with 0.2 of antimony).
It is between this matrice and the basin that are successively figured the leaves cut with the punch from the colored collodion. The figuring is effected by a quick pressure, the moulds being kept at the temperature of 212°. For the stalks adapt to the leaf an iron wire colored with green paper.
Recently, M. Berard has made a new application of the colored collodion spread on cloth or paper, and figured by pressure on surfaces representing hollow the prefectures of the skins 8hagrecned for book-binding. This figuring is effected between a copper cylinder and a cylinder in shields of paper, hardened by an energetic pressure that exercises a strong screw on the iron axis of this kind of paper cylinder.
 
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