Paint For Coating Wire Work

Boil good linseed oil with as much litharge as will make it of the consistency to be laid on with the brush; add lampblack at the rate of one part to every ten, by weight of the litharge; boil three hours over a gentle fire. The first coat should be thinner than the following coats.

Razor Paste

1. Levigated oxide of tin (prepared putty powder) 1 oz.; powdered oxalic acid 1-4 oz.; powdered gum 20 grs.; make it into a stiff paste with water, and evenly and thinly spread it over the strop. With very little friction, this paste gives a fine edge to the razor, and its efficiency is still further increased by moistening it.

2. Emery reduced to an impalpable powder 2 parts; spermaceti ointment 1 part; mix together, and rub it over the strop.

3. Jewellers' rouge, blacklead, and suet, equal parts; mix.

Cutting Glass

To cut bottles, shades, or other glass vessels neatly, heat a rod of iron to redness, and having filled your vessal the exact height you wish it to be cut, with oil of any kind, you proceed very gradually to dip the red hot iron into the oil, which, heating all along the surface, suddenly the glass chips and cracks right round, when you can lift off the upper portion clean by the surface of the oil.

Dextrine, Or British Gum

Dry potato-starch heated from 300° to 600° until it becomes brown, soluble in cold water, and ceases to turn blue with iodine. Used by calico printers and others, instead of gum arabic.

Sealing-Wax For Fruit-Cans

Beeswax, 1/2 oz.; English vermillion, 1 1/2 ozs.; gum shellac, 2 1/2 ozs.; rosin, 8 ozs. Take some cheap iron vessel that you can always keep for the purpose, and put in the rosin and melt it, and stir in the vermillion. Then add the shellac, slowly, and stir that in, and afterward the beeswax. When wanted for use at any after time, set it upon a slow fire and melt it so you can dip bottle-nozzles, in. For any purpose, such as an application to trees, where you want it tougher than the above preparation will make it, add a little more beeswax, and leave out the vermillion.

If the vermillion is left out in the above, the wax will be all the better for it, as it is merely used for coloring purposes.

Fusible Metal

1. Bismuth 8 parts; lead 5 parts; tin 3 parts; melt together Melts below 212 degrees Fahr, 2. Bismuth 2 parts; lead 5 parts; tin 3 parts. Melts in boiling water. 3. Lead 3 parts; tin 2 parts; bismuth 5 parts; mix. Melts at 197 deg. Fahr.

Remarks. The above are used to make toy-spoons, to surprise children by their melting in hot liquors; and to form pencils for writing on asses' skin, or paper prepared by rubbing burnt hartshorn into it.

Metallic Cement

M. Greshiem states that an alloy of copper and mercury, pre-pared as follows, is capable of attaching itself firmly to the surfaces of metal, glass, and porcelain. From twenty to thirty parts of finely divided copper, obtained by the reduction of oxide of copper with hydrogen, or by precipitation from solution of its sulphate with zinc, are made into a paste with oil of vitrol and seventy parts of mercury added, the whole being well triturated. When the amalgamation is complete, the acid is removed by washing with boiling water, and the compound allowed to cool. In ten or twelve hours, it becomes sufficiently hard to receive a brilliant polish, and to scratch the surface of tin or gold. By heat it assumes the consistence of wax; and, as it does not contract on cooling, M. Greshiem recommends its use by dentists for stopping teeth.