Ingredients
- one ounce of nitric acid
- two ounces of rain water
- a teaspoonful of muriatic acid
- an ounce of grain tin
- a pound of cop- peras to a gallon of lye
- a gallon of lye
- one color
Directions
You may darken light mahogany so as to match a darker piece b) putting on a wash of soap lees or quicklime, dissolved in water ; make the washes thin and go over till dark enough.
Grain is imitated in various ways. Take a flat brush, cut away some of the hairs irreglarly, not carelessly, but so that none of the notches shall be alike. The beauty of the grain of wood is its variety and con- stant change. Keep this idea in your mind and take advantage of any accidental effect. Pomts, circles, broken lines, waves, blending from one color to another, then broken by a strongly marked color, are characteristics to be seized and followed.
Cherry, apple, pear and holly woods are good to ebonize with bllack stains.
To improve the color of any stain, mix in a bottle one ounce of nitric acid, half a teaspoonful of muriatic acid, a quarter of an ounce of grain tin and two ounces of rain water ; mix two days before using, and keep your bottle well corked.
Use no perfume of any kind to counteract the odor of the paint ; this will make matters worse. Admit fresh air freely every day, working, if possible, in fine weather.
In painting wood, use an easel to hold your wood with an upward slant, before which you may sit comfortably, and rest your hand on a maul-stick, that is, if you are painting anything too large to place on your desk with ease.
A Cement to Stop Flaws or Cracks in Wood of Any Color — Put any quantity of saw-dust, of the same wood your work is made with, into an earthen pan and pour boiling water over it ; stir it well and let it remain for a week or ten days, occasionally stirring it ; then boil it for some time, and it will be of the consistency of pulp or paste ; put it in a coarse cloth and squeeze all the moisture from it ; keep it for use, and when wanted.
368 woons.
mix a sufficient quantity of thin glue to make it a paste ; rub well into the cracks, or fill up the holes in your work with it when it is quite hard and dry ; clean your work off, and if carefully done, you will scarcely discover the imperfection.
To give pine an oak color : Wash the wood carefully in a solution of copperas dissolved in strong lye, in the proportion of a pound of cop- peras to a gallon of lye; when the wood is dry, after having been thus thoroughly saturated with this wash, oil it, and it will look fresh and nice for a year or two, when it can be restamed and again oiled. Often, when not subjected to hard usage, the color will remain undimmed for several years, only requiring to be oiled occasionally. The color may be put on with a short bristled brush, or, the hands being protected with thick buckskin gloves, the wash may be applied with a cloth, which will saturate the wood more evenly. It will blister the hands if they are not well protected.