Take two ounces of bees’ wax, scrape it fine, put it into a pot or jar, and pour over it enough of spirits of turpentine to cover it; let it stand a little while, and it will be ready for use. If the furniture is to be kept a dark colour, mix a very small quantity of alkanet root or rose-pink, with it.
TO CLEAN FURNITURE WITH OIL.
Take a pint of cold-drawn linseed oil, and if you wish to colour it, take a little alkanet root or rose-pink, and mix with it: put a little on the furniture, and rub it well with a woollen cloth; do not let the oil stand long on the table before it is rubbed off.
GERMAN POLISH FOR FURNITURE.
Melt a quarter of a pound of yellow wax and an ounce of black resin, well beaten, in an earthen pipkin. Then pour in by degrees two ounces of spirit of turpentine. When the whole is thoroughly mixed, put it into an earthen jar, and keep it covered for use. Spread a little of it on the furniture with a woollen cloth, rub it well in, and in a few days the polish will be as hard and as bright as varnish.
TO WARM A CARRIAGE.
Convey into it a stone bottle of boiling water, or for the feet a single glass bottle of boiled water, wrapped in flannel.
TO PRESERVE BRASS ORNAMENTS.
Brass ornaments, when not gilt or lackered, may be cleaned, and a fine colour may be given to them by two simple processes. The first is to beat sal ammoniac into a fine powder, then to moisten it with soft water, rubbing it on the ornaments, which must be heated over charcoal, and rubbed dry with bran and whiting. The second is to wash the brass work with roche alum boiled in strong ley, in the proportion of an ounce to a pint; when dry it must be rubbed with fine tripoli. Either of these processes will give to brass the brilliancy of gold.
TO PREVENT THE SMOKING OF A LAMP.