Important: Safety Warning
This page describes trade processes that use dangerously toxic materials such as cyanide solutions, mercury amalgams, or strong acids. These processes require training, equipment, and precautions far beyond what the text describes.
This page directs the use of hazardous substances — such as benzine, gasoline, lye, or strong acids — for household tasks. These materials are highly flammable, corrosive, or poisonous, and the practices described have caused fires, burns, and poisonings.
This information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
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House Cleaning: Marble
To Remove Iron Rust from Marble. -To remove iron stains from marble, dilute 1 part of oxalic acid with 10 parts of alcohol, or 1 part of sulphuric acid with 25 to 50 parts of alcohol; cover the spot and let stand 15 minutes to a half hour. Wash off with water containing aqua ammonia to stop the action of the acid. Repeat if necessary. Or cover the spot thickly with salt and moisten with lemon juice.
Or apply 1 part of nitric acid diluted with 25 parts of water, and rinse with aqua ammonia.
Or apply strong nitric acid direct to the stain by means of a small swab or cloth, or cotton on the end of a stick, and at once rinse off with aqua ammonia and water. Remember that the acid tends to eat and injure the marble if it is not immediately rinsed off; hence rinse well. If the surface of the marble is roughened by the acid, scour with a moist cloth dipped in rotten stone or powdered pumice.
Or cover the spot with salts of lemon, and add just enough water to dissolve the crystals. Or mix equal quantities of salts of lemon and pumice stone, and rub the spot with a cloth dipped in this mixture. Continue until removed. To Clean Marble Steps. To clean coarse marbles, as doorsteps, monuments, and the like, mix equal quantities of quicklime and potash lye and dilute with water to a thin cream.
Apply with a brush, let stand twenty-four hours or more, and wash off with hot soapsuds.
To Remove Stains from Marble.- Cut a lemon in half and rub with it, or apply a saturated solution of oxalic acid.
Or make a paste of equal parts of whiting and sal soda dissolved in water. Cover the stains, and let stand for several hours. Afterwards wash off with soapsuds.
To Remove Oil Stains from Marble. -Apply common clay, starch, whiting, or prepared chalk, and saturate with gasoline or other petroleum product. Should these injure the polish, scour with a moistened cloth dipped in pumice stone, and polish with whiting.
Or mix with boiling water 2 ounces of soft soap, 2 ounces of caustic potash, and 4 ounces of fuller's earth. Cover the spots thickly, and let stand for several hours. Rinse with clear water.
To Polish Marble. - For polishing marble, sandstone, sand and water, emery powder, putty powder, tripoli, and whiting are all recommended.
But the coarser materials, such as sandstone and fine sand, should only be used on rough marble which has never been previously polished. Select material suitable to the condition of the marble, and follow with a finer one until the desired polish is obtained.
To polish a rough marble slab, use first a level block of fine sandstone for working down. Cover the surface with water and rub with the sandstone in a circular motion, working outward from the center until the whole surface shows a uniform texture. Next tack a piece of felt to a smooth block of wood and use a finer quality of sand or glass powder with water.