Fifteen pounds good paris white, mixed up in lukewarm water, add one-fourth pound good glue, dissolved in the usual way, strain through a fine sieve, then dissolve one-fourth pound white hard soap in hot water and one-half pound of alum in cold water and mix. Add water to give the right consistency for putting it on the wall.
TO TAKE OFF THE PAINT.
If you have an old, roughly painted door to cut down for a fine job, don’t fool away your time, and fill your nose with dust, trying to do it with dry sandpaper, but take the door off its hinges, lay it flat on horses, and keep the surface under your sandpaper wet with benzine, and you can do in an hour what would otherwise take half a day. The benzine softens the paint, and keeps the paper from gumming up. If it is not practicable to take the door off the hinges, put your benzine in a small spring-bottomed oil can and squirt it on the work as needed to keep the paper clear of paint and make it cut fast. Wipe off the loose paint with rags. It works equally well on old varnish. Try it once on an old carriage body.
If the old paint is extra hard use a mixture in equal parts of benzine and ammonia.
CLEANING SILVER, BRASS OR COPPER.
In the course of our work we often meet with tarnished metal ornaments, which must be cleaned to make our work look well.
This preparation is a good one:
| Paris white (fine) | 1 | pound |
| Carb. magnesia | 2 | drams |
| Cyanuret potash | 7 | drams |
| Sulph. ether | 3 | drams |
| Crocus martis | 1 | dram |
| Soft water | 1½ | ounces |
| or sufficient to make a stiff paste. | ||