TO SECURE THE WAX SHEETS.
To make the thin sheets of wax, Mr. A. I. Root takes sheets or plates of galvanized iron with a wooden handle. These are cooled by dipping in ice-water, and then are dipped two, or three times if the wax is very hot, in the melted wax, which is maintained at the proper temperature by keeping it in a double-walled vessel, with hot water in the outer chamber. Such a boiler, too, prevents burning of the wax, which would ruin it, while it is being melted. After dipping the plates in the wax, they are again dipped, when dripping has ceased, into the cold water, after which the sheets of wax are cleaved off, the plates brushed, wiped, cooled, and dipped again. The boiler used in melting the wax has the gate with a fine wire sieve attached near the top, so that the wax as it is drawn off into the second boiler, will be thoroughly cleansed. Mr. Root states that two men and a boy will thus make four hundred pounds of wax sheets in a day.
Others use wooden plates on which to mold the sheets, while the Hetherington brothers prefer, and are very successful with a wooden cylinder, which is made to revolve in the melted wax, and is so hinged, that it can be speedily raised above or lowered into the liquid.
For cutting foundation, nothing is so admirable as the Carlin cutter ([Fig, 67, a]), which is like the wheel glass-cutters sold in the shops, except that a larger wheel of tin takes the place of the one of hardened steel. Mr. A. I. Root has suggested a grooved board ([Fig. 67, b]) to go with the above, the distance between the grooves being equal to the desired width of the strips of comb foundation to be cut.