The complete servant / Being a practical guide to the peculiar duties and business of all descriptions of servants, from the housekeeper to the servant of all-work, and from the land steward to the foot-boy. With useful receipts and tables

by servant Samuel Adams; Sarah Adams

The gum sandarac and lac render this varnish durable; it may be coloured with a little saffron or dragon’s blood.

TO MAKE BLACKING.

Take of ivory-black and treacle, each 12 oz.
spermaceti oil, 4 oz.
white wine vinegar, 4 pints.

Mix.

This blacking, (recommended by Mr. Gray, lecturer on the materia medica,) is superior in giving leather a finer polish than any of those that are advertised, as they all contain sulphuric acid, (oil of vitriol,) which is necessary, to give it the polishing quality, but it renders leather rotten and very liable to crack.

Another.

Take of vinegar, No. 18, (the common,) 1 quart,
ivory-black, and treacle, each 6 oz.
vitriolic acid, and spermaceti, (or common oil,)
each 1½ oz.

Mix the acid and oil first, afterwards add the other ingredients; if, when it is used, it does not dry quick enough on the leather, add a little more of the vitriol, a little at a time. When there is too much of the vitriolic acid, which is various in its strength, the mixture will give it a brown colour.

Liquid Japan Blacking.

Take 3 ounces of ivory-black, 2 ounces of coarse sugar, one ounce of sulphuric acid, one ounce of muriatic acid, one table-spoonful of sweet oil and lemon acid, and one pint of vinegar. First mix the ivory-black and sweet oil together, then the lemon and sugar, with a little vinegar, to qualify the blacking; next add the sulphuric and muriatic acids, and mix them all well together.