For red stain, take Venetian red, 2 parts; yellow ochre, 1 part—both dry—and mix with skim milk. For yellow stain, use water-lime, tinted with yellow ochre. Mix as above.
Skim milk when mixed with common quicklime, Portland cement, or Venetian red, is converted into an insoluble binder, which renders the mixture waterproof, so that it will not wash off when wet; neither will it rub up when dry. Other pigments can be added, by way of coloring, up to 25 per cent., without affecting the insolubility of the paint.
For a brick wall, which has not been rubbed or painted, Venetian red toned down with yellow ochre, beats any glue and acid mixture for durability.
TO CLEAN DOOR PLATES.
Put on with a rag a weak solution of ammonia in water, and rub to dryness.
TO CLEAN VARNISHED PAINT.
In a gallon of water, boil a pound of wheat bran, and wash the varnish with the water.
SLOWING THE DRYING OF PAINT.
In wall painting or otherwise, especially in hot weather, if the paint dries so fast as to show laps in spite of your best efforts with the brush, the addition of a little cotton seed oil will make the paint dry slower without hurting the gloss; or if you are using flat color, and it dries too fast, a little cotton seed oil will make it dry slower, and not make a gloss. You can, by a little experiment, determine how much of cotton seed oil to use in each case.