Important: Safety Warning
This page describes practices involving highly flammable materials in ways that create a serious risk of fire or explosion.
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 information has been left in for historical purposes but should not be acted upon.
Home › Leather, Ink, and Miscellaneous › Leather, Ink, and Miscellaneous: Melt
Leather, Ink, and Miscellaneous: Melt
Or melt 2 ounces of mutton suet and 6 ounces of beeswax. Add 6 ounces of brown sugar, 2 ounces of castile-soap jelly, and 1 ounce of indigo. Melt with gentle heat, mix, and stir in 1 gill of turpentine. Apply with a sponge or cloth and polish with a brush.
Black Varnish Jet or Polish for Leather. Dissolve with gentle heat 3 sticks of any color of sealing wax desired in 1 pint of 95 per cent alcohol, and apply warm with a sponge or brush. For carriage bodies, dashboards, and the like, apply first, to save extra coats, a dye of copperas water or logwood, and afterwards lay on the varnish.
Or to 1 gallon of alcohol add 1 LEATHER, INK, AND MISCELLANEOUS ounce of sulphuric acid. Stir in 1 pounds of gum shellac. Let stand 2 or 3 days or until dissolved, and add 4 ounces of ivory black. Let stand 24 hours and pour off the thin liquid from the top. This recipe is waterproof and is a suitable polish for all leather. It is a commercial article which sells on the market at about 25 cents an ounce.
Black Balls for Leather. - Melt together 2 ounces of lard, 8 ounces of neat's-foot oil, 2 ounces of wax, and 8 ounces of brown sugar in 8 ounces of water. Bring the whole to a boil, and stir in 10 ounces of ivory black.
Remove from the fire and stir constantly until it cools, then roll into balls two inches in diameter.
Or melt 4 ounces of tallow and 2 pounds of beeswax, and add 4 ounces of lampblack mixed with 4 ounces of gum arabic. Stir together and roll into balls.
Melt together beeswax, 8 ounces; ivory black, 2 ounces; turpentine, 1 ounce; Prussian blue ground in oil, 1 ounce, and copal varnish, ounce.