This section is from the book "The Manual Of Receipts", by Sidney Paine Johnston. Also available from Amazon: The Manual Of Receipts.
To clean polishing leather prepare a weak solution of soda in warm water, rub soap on polishing leather and allow same to soak for several hours. Then wash thoroughly and rinse in a solution of soda and yellow soap water to keep it soft. If washed in water alone the leather becomes too hard to use, but the small amount of soap remaining in the fibre of the leather penetrates it, making it soft as silk. When it has been rinsed, wring the weather in a coarse towel and dry quickly. When dry, pull it in every direction and brush well. This will give a very soft leather.
To clean screws that are not large enough to be treated separately, put them in a small box, pour a little oil over them and shake for a minute. Next place cotton waste in the box and shake again for a minute. Then put a handful of sawdust in the box and shake again for a minute, removing sawdust by sifting it from the screws in a fine sieve.
To clean silver dial plates of clocks, which have lost their bright surface from the effect of smoke or sulphurous vapors, make pulverized tartar into a paste with water. Some of this paste is taken on a bristly-brush and the dial plate is rubbed, being whirled until the silvering assumes again its original whiteness and lustre. Then the dial plate is to be washed with clean water and dried by mildly patting it with a cloth, the final step being its exposure to a moderate heat for a few minutes.
To clean silver ornaments, first wash article in a bath of soda lye, then use either a boiling hot solution of tartar, or enwrap them with zinc wire, boiling them in a fluid consisting of 1 part of borax dissolved in 10 parts of water.
The best way to clean solder from old files is to soak the file in raw muriatic acid for twenty-four hours, and you will have almost a new file.
To clean tinware use Canton flannel, with a little alcohol sprinkled on it, and some whiting.
(2) To clean tinware which has been stained by using acid when soldering, rub the article first with rotten stone and sweet oil, then finish with whiting and a piece of soft leather.
Is composed of tin (36 parts), lead (50 parts), cadmium (22 5-10 parts); or, tin (48 parts), lead (32 1/2 parts), cadmium (10 1/2 parts), bismuth (9 parts).
(1) Iron can be coppered by dipping it into melted copper, the surface of which is protected by a melted layer of cryolite and phosphoric acid.
(2) To coat iron with copper consists in dipping the article in a solution of oxalate of copper and bicarbonate of soda, dissolved in 10 or 15 parts of water acidified with some organic acid.
The following is the method for coating metal surfaces with glass, which may be found to answer various purposes. Take about 125 parts (by weight) of ordinary flint glass fragments, 20 parts of carbonate of soda, and 12 parts of boracic acid, and melt. Pour the fused mass out on some cold surface, as of stone of metal, and pulverize when cooled off. Make a mixture of this powder with silicate of soda.
 
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