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Typo: A Monthly Newspaper and Literary Review, Volume 1
[trade wrinkles, part one]
To Separate the Leaves of Charred Books, Deeds, &c., a French official has devised the following means: Cut off the back of the charred book so as to render the leaves absolutely independent of each other, then soak them, and dry them rapidly by a current of hot air. The leaves will then separate, but must, of course, be handled with extreme care.
Gilding Glass and Ivory.—The Glashatte states that to apply decoration upon ivory or glass, the design must be painted over with a fine camel-hair brush, on which is nitro-muriate of gold. The glass or ivory is then held over the mouth of a bottle in which hydrogen gas has been generated by the action of diluted sulphuric acid upon zinc. The hydrogen will reduce the chloride of gold on the painted surfaces into metallic gold, and the thin gold film thus precipitated will, in a short time, assume considerable brightness.—Another Method for the same purpose is specially applicable to glass. Gold-dust is prepared by placing leaf-gold with a little honey or thick india-rubber mucilage in an earthen vessel, and then rubbing the mixture well until the gold has been changed into dust, when the honey is removed by repeated rinsings with warm water. The gold-dust is then mixed with a strong solution of borax, and the pattern is coated with the composition. When dry, the glass is placed in an oven, and considerably heated. By this means the borax and cement are sufficiently vitrified for the gold to adhere firmly to the glass.