To Make Good Soap.—To make matchless soap, take one gallon of soft soap, to which add a gill of common salt, and boil an hour. When cold, separate the ley from the crude. Add to the crude two pounds of sal-soda, and boil in two gallons of soft water till dissolved. If you wish it better, slice two pounds of common bar soap and dissolve in the above. If the soft soap makes more than three pounds of crude, add in proportion to the sal-soda and water.
To Make Hard Soap from Soft.—Take seven pounds of good soft soap; four pounds sal-soda; two ounces borax; one ounce hartshorn; half a pound of resin; to be dissolved in twenty-two quarts of water, and boiled about twenty minutes.
Whale Oil Soap (for the destruction of Insects.)—Render common ley caustic, by boiling it at full strength on quicklime; then take the ley and boil it with as much whale oil foot as it will saponify (change to soap), pour off into molds, and, when cold, it is tolerably hard. Whale oil foot is the sediment produced in refining whale oil, and is worth two dollars per barrel.
Soluble Glass.—Mix ten parts of carbonate of potash, fifteen parts of powdered quartz, and one pound of charcoal. Fuse well together. The mass is soluble in four or five parts of boiling water, and the filtered solution, evaporated to dryness, yields a transparent glass, permanent in the air.
To Make Eggs of Pharaoh's Serpents.—Take mercury and dissolve it in moderately diluted nitric acid by means of heat, taking care, however, that there be always an excess of metallic mercury remaining; decant the solution and pour it into a solution of sulpho-cyanide of ammonium or potassium, which may be bought at a good drug store, or of a dealer in chemicals. Equal weights of both will answer. A precipitate will fall to the bottom of the beaker or jar, which is to be collected on a filter and washed two or three times with water, when it is put in a warm place to dry. Take for every pound of this material one ounce of gum tragacanth which has been soaked in hot water. When the gum is completely softened it is to be transferred to a mortar, and the pulverized and dried precipitate gradually mixed with it by means of a little water, so as to present a somewhat dry pill mass, from which by hand pellets of the desired size are formed, put on a piece of glass, and dried again; they are then ready for use.
Tracing Paper.—In order to prepare a beautiful transparent, colorless paper, it is best to employ the varnish formed with Demarara resin in the following way: The sheets intended for this purpose are laid flat on each other, and the varnish spread over the uppermost sheet with a brush, until the paper appears perfectly colorless, without, however, the liquid thereon being visible. The first sheet is then removed, hung up for drying, and the second treated in the same manner. After being dried, this paper is capable of being written on, either with chalk or pencil, or steel pens. It preserves its colorless transparency without becoming yellow, as is frequently the case with that prepared in any other way.
Unsurpassable Blacking.—Put one gallon of vinegar into a stone jug, and one pound of ivory-black well pulverized, half a pound of loaf sugar, half an ounce of oil of vitriol, and seven ounces of sweet oil. Incorporate the whole by stirring.
2. Take twelve ounces each of ivory-black and molasses; spermaceti oil, four ounces; and white wine vinegar, two quarts. Mix thoroughly. This contains no vitriol, and therefore will not injure the leather. The trouble of making it is very little, and it would be well to prepare it for one's self, were it only to be assured that it is not injurious.
Varnish for Iron Work.—To make a good black varnish for iron work, take eight pounds of asphaltum and fuse it in an iron kettle; then add five gallons of boiled linseed oil, one pound of litharge, half a pound of sulphate of zinc (add these slowly, or it will fume over), and boil them for about three hours. Now add one and a half pounds of dark gum amber, and boil for two hours longer, or until the mass will become quite thick when cool, after which it should be thinned with turpentine to due consistency.