Cloth, goat-skin, and marbled leather (without previous sizing, white of egg): medium heat.
Sheep-skin and lamb-skin (glue size, white of egg): medium heat. Calf (white of egg): hot.
Morocco goat (without sizing, white of egg): medium heat.
Morocco, Levant morocco, crushed morocco (glue size—painted in, white of egg): lukewarm.
Pig-skin, Russia, seal (without sizing, white of egg): lukewarm.
Mention has already been made of a wash of paste water for matt calf. As a rule, the whole surface is washed with this preparation, as it is thereby rendered less liable to finger marks. In the very best shops there is still another method. The leather is washed down with tragacanth and the previously impressed design picked out with white of egg and quickly tooled with tools medium to hot.
Vellum requires a special treatment. On the day before it is to be finished in gold it is washed with alum solution and, for gold tooling, sized with undiluted white of egg and tooled lukewarm.
When tooling is done with powder it is dusted on by means of a powder-box, over which is stretched some thin material, and tooled lukewarm.
The great convenience in the use of powder induces many binders to adopt it for leather and cloth also. This practice is objectionable, and the conscientious finisher will always avoid it. It may be excused when a name has to be printed on a Prayer-book or similar article in a hurry, or when an article is already varnished, as powder in such a case is very convenient and satisfactory, but under any other conditions it is a sign of incompetence.
Tooling upon powder on leather looks very gritty and unsightly after having undergone many changes of temperature, as the latter greatly affects this material. Its brightness vanishes entirely—a thing that never happens when white of egg has been used.