Pigments, Paint and Painting: A practical book for practical men

by George Terry

ILLUSTRATIONS.

FIGURE		PAGE
[1],[2].	Bone-black Furnace	[8]
[3-11].	Apparatus for Making Lamp-black	[ 12-22]
[12].	Furnace for Roasting Cobalt Ores	[31]
[13].	Furnace for Making Smalts	[33]
[14-17].	Yellow Prussiate Furnace	[60]
[18-20].	Hannay’s White Lead Furnace	[217]
[21-25].	Lewis’s White Lead Furnace	[226], [230]
[26], [27].	MacIvor’s White Lead Process	[233], [239]
[28].	Apparatus for Making Zinc Oxide	[248]
[29].	Apparatus for Making Zinc Sulphide	[253]
[30-32].	Furnace for Roasting Ochres	[278]
[33-39].	Apparatus for Extracting Seed-Oils	[309-315]
[40-44].	Wright & Co.’s Paint Mills	[340-344]
[45].	Hind & Lund’s Paint Mill	[346]
[46-48].	Brinjes and Goodwin’s Paint Mills	[347], [348]
[49].	Noakes & Co.’s Metallic Keg	[347], [350]

CHAPTER I.
PRELIMINARY.

Colour.—The term “colour” is inappropriately given by common usage to material substances which convey a sense of colour to the human eye, but is properly restricted to that sense itself. The material colour should be called “pigment” or “dyestuff” in the raw state, and paint when compounded with other substances for application in the form of a coating.

The sense of colour is due to light. In the absence of light there is no colour, only blackness; and black is really no colour, but an absence of colour. Very many conditions combine to cause different colour sensations, some of which are understood, while others we are not able to explain.

For instance, take the action of heat upon a solution of chloride of cobalt. As soon as the liquid becomes warm, the pink colour disappears and gives place to blue; but on pouring water into it, the blue vanishes and the pink reappears. Again, on heating the blue crystals of sulphate of copper they become white, but the blue colour comes back when water is added, and the solution assumes a deeper tint as it dissolves more of the white powder.

If all the rays are cut off from an electric light except those which are in and beyond the violet, and a flask containing a solution of sulphate of quinine is held in that portion of the spectrum, it will become luminous. The same thing will occur even more strikingly on placing a piece of uranium glass in the ultra-violet rays. The explanation of this phenomenon is that beyond those rays which give light there are others which do not give light, i. e. which do not cause us to experience the sensation of light; the reason being that their vibrations are too rapid. But when certain other substances, such as sulphate of quinine, or a thin slip of uranium glass, are placed in the path of the rays, this rapid motion is arrested and modified, and these rays, which in themselves are not luminous, are reflected back to our eyes as luminous rays. The rapidity of the vibrations being moderated, our retinas become sensible to them as rays of blue light.

Colour does not depend only upon chemical composition nor solely upon the aggregation of the particles, but upon these and other things besides not yet explained. All matter is in a state of motion. If you heat a substance you communicate an increased activity of motion to the particles of which it consists. When certain coloured rays of light are falling upon a substance, these coloured rays of light have a motion peculiar to themselves. It may be that the degree of motion in that substance, either existing in it naturally without heating, or communicated to it by artificial heating, is such that these rays of light are precisely those which that substance is not capable of sending back to our eyes. They are then absorbed or destroyed in some way, by the particular state of that substance upon which they fall; and those rays which the substance is capable of reflecting back are mainly sent back to our eyes. Certain colours, such as blue, yellow, and green, absorb certain rays more or less perfectly, and reflect back in the main blue, yellow, and green to our eyes. Hence it is incumbent on those who are studying colour, and who are interested in the purity and permanency of colour, to comprehend at least the principles of that science of light which tells of the action of light upon various bodies that are used as pigments in painting.