Mr. Belin. Officer, how many years have you personally made paraffin tests?
Mr. Barnes. Since 1956.
Mr. Belin. What is the procedure by which you determine whether or not there are any nitrates on one's hand?
Mr. Barnes. The analyses are made at Parkland Hospital by their personnel.
Mr. Belin. Do they analyze the wax?
Mr. Barnes. They analyze the wax that I remove from his hands after the casts are made.
Mr. Belin. Well, if you were to take a paraffin or make a paraffin test on one of my hands, you would take melted hot wax and put it over my hands?
Mr. Barnes. It wouldn't be hot wax. It would have to be at a degree where it would be melted. Take a paint brush, small paint brush, dip it into the paraffin, and paint your hand as you would be painting a wall, and you build this paraffin up around and around your hand, front and back, until you get a layer approximately a quarter of an inch thick.
Then you wrap the hands in gauze, just a layer of gauze around it for reenforcement purposes such as you would put steel and concrete to reenforce it, and then on top of this gauze we put another layer of paraffin. In fact, several layers of paraffin on top of the gauze to round it out to make it more firm so that when we remove this paraffin from around his hands, we take a pair of surgical scissors and cut down each side, and it slips off just like you were removing a glove.
Mr. Belin. You would make two cuts then, one along the side of the little finger and one along the side of the thumb?