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07 31st, 2009| 
Metalwork in China Restoration
Now for the techniques involving metalwork and drilling. There are three main types of drill, the hand drill or Bob drill; the hand twist drill, or the power drill.
Bob Drill. The Bob drill, which is the traditional china restorers’ tool, consists of a steel spindle with a bob of wood towards the lower end, an eye at the top, and a tapered point at the bottom. It has a cross bar of wood with a hole in the middle which lets it slide up and down the spindle. A lace is passed through the eye at the top of die spindle and fastened to each end of the cross bar.
The cross bar is held by placing three fingers on top of it and the thumb and little finger below. Make a small starter hole in the china with a broken file or a diamond and place the point of the drill, which carries a tube containing a drilling diamond, in this hole. Keeping the drill upright, press down gently on the cross bar. This moves down the spindle, unwinding the lace and turning the spindle complete with bit. The impetus of the bob, acting as a kind of flywheel, carries the rotation of the spindle a little further as the pressure is relaxed and then back again rewinding the lace onto the spindle. Keep the drill straight, don’t let it sway from side to side, and lubricate the bit with oil as the work goes on.
Hand Twist Drill. This is used much the same way, although it is for sonic people not quite such an easy tool to use. It is necessary to exert a little pressure to get the bit to bite, and the piece must therefore be firmly held.
Power Drill. Provided your drill runs at about z000 r.p.m. it call be used for drilling, especially in substantial pieces. The hole will have to be started by hand. Special bits are needed, and the drill must be mounted vertically on a bench stand. For some jobs a horizontal stand will have to be used. If the piece is properly held under the drill, and you are not too heavy handed, this method should be satisfactory.
Tack some kind of pad to the workbench under the drill to act as a shock absorber. This should not be too soft; a piece of thick lino or cork will do.
Put the drilling tube into the chuck of the drill and start the motor, checking carefully to make sure that the tube when spinning is absolutely straight and not whipping at all.
Put the piece of china on the bench under tile drill and bring the machine down, not switched on, to within an inch of the working point. The hole should already have been started with a hand drill. Get everything perfectly aligned and secure the piece to the bench as best you can. Start the drill and bring it very very gently down into the hole. The moment it bites, lift it and have a look to see if you are working straight. Then lubricate with water (or turps if you are drilling glass) and continue drilling, lubricating frequently. To drill large holes, start by drilling a small one, then enlarge the mouth of the hole for the next size drilling tube with a tungsten carbide bit. This means a lot of bit changing, so don’t forget to check for whip each time.
To keep objects steady under the drill, prop them up with large chunks of plastid ne. Small objects can temporarily be set in plaster of Paris, in a small wooden box at the right angle for drilling. If your piece of china is so big that there isn’t room to get it under the drill, it may be possible to swing the drill round so that it points out over the side of the bench, and then the china can be put on a separate table at the right height.
All drilling takes a steady hand, a straight eye and a light touch. If die drill waves about the results won’t be very good, and if too much pressure is applied there is always a risk of splitting the china. This applies especially when using a mounted power drill, as you have so much leverage and it is harder to tell by feel just how much pressure you are putting on. Practice on some useless bits and pieces, for hours, if necessary!
Dowelling. Dowelling is die joining together of two pieces by boring a hole in each, the ends of which match exactly, so that either a straight pin, or a pin angled at the join (as in a knee joint) can be cemented in to hold the two together. For most purposes half hard brass wire 132, in a A’ diameter hole, is right. The holes should be about a quarter of an inch deep. To align the holes properly, bore one side, then push the tip of a thoroughly wet indelible pencil into the hole so that it is well ringed with ink. Then bring the other, undrilled side to the join tight against the drilled piece in exactly the right position. The indelible ink will mark the undrilled piece, and you can go ahead and bore right on the mark. Countersink one or both holes with a slightly bigger bit.
Take a piece of brass wire and flatten it slightly on one side to allow air to escape from the holes as it is inserted. Push it home into one of the holes and cut the wire, allowing sufficient length to go to the bottom of the other hole. Then fit the second piece over the wire. If the wire is too long to allow the faces to come together properly, snip off a little tiny bit and try again until you do get an exact fit. Obviously, the secret of this job is to be sure your holes are accurately bored facing each other, or you will spend ages fiddling about bending the wire or enlarging holes.
When die wire fits properly, take the wire right out and Jay it on the work bench and roll a rough file backwards and forwards across it so that it is scratched and scored to make a key for the cement.
Make up some cement (see Fillers and Cements) from whichever mixture you fancy. Araldite and titanium dioxide or kaolin or whiting are as good as any because Araldite sticks so strongly. Fill one of the holes, that on the bigger piece of china and push in the dowel making sure that it goes right home as it did when you fitted it. Sonic cement will ooze up into the countersinking. Wipe it away, as the countersinking will later fill with cement from the other side of the join and this will help to hold the two pieces together. Try the second piece over the dowel just to make sure that everything still fits. Then remove it, and leave the dowel to set hard in its cement. The next day, or after baking for half an hour at zoo deg F. if epoxy resin has been used, clean the surfaces of the break with methylated spirit, and make up some more cement and fill the hole in the second piece. Provided the broken edges of the piece fit perfectly it is not necessary to put adhesive between them. Adhesive will in effect widen the join a fraction and make a line which will show. But if there arc irregularities or missing chips, then put some adhesive or even a little filler composition in to fill them out. If you decide that adhesive is necessary, put a thus layer on one side of the break only.
Push the second piece well home on to the dowel, and make sure that the fit is good. Bind the pieces together with gummed strip as described before.
Dowelling is used to join modelled or moulded or cast pieces to the whole in exactly the same way. Dowels will also support joins in hollow china, or help to join hollow pieces to solid pieces. The solid piece is bored in the same way as before, but the reverse process has to be carried out in the hollow section, a block of cement being built up to hold the dowel. When both sides are hollow and the hole is large use a heavier gauge wire or make a dowel out of a tube of brass. It is difficult to fill in a large space with cement and to set a small pin iri the middle of it. Wrap a ribbon of cement composition round and round the dowel until it is enough to fill the cavity, and push the dowel, with its cement wrapping, firmly into place. The cement may ride up the dowel if it is too much to go into the cavity, and it will not adhere if it is too little. Having cemented in one end of the dowel, leave it to set, and then swathe the protruding end in die same way, finally fitting the broken piece over the dowel and cement, until a flush join is achieved.
pitillilig. In some ways, pinning is easier than dowelling. A hole is drilled through the broken sections after they have been stuck together and a pin, prepared in the same way as a dowel, is pushed into the hole which has been filled with a fairly liquid cement mixture. The advantages of this method are that there is no difficulty in getting the holes to match up as they are drilled in one go, and that no binding is necessary as the join has already been made. The pin is sunk well into the hole so that the outer end is just below the surface. The hole is then filled in with composition and overpainted in due course (see Fig. io).
Cores. Cores are commonly used when a large missing section has to be built up, to support a piece which may sag
these two pieces
cannot easily or be liable to breakage. Wire of a suitable gauge is used according to the thickness of the china. Holes are bored each side of the aperture, only just deep enough to accept the end of the wire. A piece of wire just slightly longer than the gap is cut and roughened, and sprung into the holes. Or a piece of wire is put into each hole and joined in the middle by soldering. Several pieces of wire can be put across a gap if necessary. If the part to be replaced is curved, a teapot handle for instance, a correctly shaped core of wire is set into holes at each end of the break (see Fig. to). Shaped cores can be made as skeleton frameworks for almost any shape or size of missing piece. Sometimes a core is not fixed at each end, but is a dowel set in the edge of a gap (see Fig. io). A bent pin makes a skeleton limb on which to build up a whole piece by modelling.
All these techniques can be combined with those described under the headings of Sticking, Moulding and Modelling.
If the china is thick enough to carry drill holes, and it is intended to make a press mould out of plasticine or Paribar, a core or cores can be put across the gap to strengthen the new piece, the filler composition being carefully tooled in to cover the wires.
Cores can be a great help when modelling. It is not possible to make a model direct by putting a large lump of composition over and round the core, it will just slip about the wire. First wind a ribbon of composition round and round the wire, and leave it to set hard. Then do the modelling on this conipo base.
Overpainting. The art of overpainting mends in china so that the repair becomes indistinguishable from the original is skilled indeed ! If you cannot paint anyway, then it is going to be pretty difficult for you. The work is done with good quality water colour paint brushes, and you will need several sizes, particularly some good fine ones. Artist’s oil paints are fine because they can be mixed so easily to make absolutely any colour. Reeves Artist’s Gel makes a good medium, or clear enamel glaze if you can get it. If you want the work to dry out quickly add drying agents bought from Artist’s Colourinen. Just how glazed the final result may be depends upon the medium, but the final result can always be varnished if it is not glossy enough. For work where opaque colours are needed, polymer paints are ideal and can be mixed with their own glaze mcdiLini to get a high finish. Darwi Italian Glaze is also excellent for work on china.
Many school teachers know about the modelling compound made by Darwi, and this firm now make a most excellent range of paints for their modelling compound which can be used on china to give the effect of glazes without firing. Darwi transparent paints are available in twelve colours, and thereis a similar range in opaque paints. Both types of paint when dry should be given a coat of the special Darwi Varnish, as this gives it the ceramic lustre, and dries hard to give lasting protection. They also make metallic paints called Darwi-Or and Darwi-Al in gold and aluminium.
The normal technique for building up colour to re- create glaze is to start by painting the whole area with a ground colour which exactly matches the ground colour of the original. This may be anything from black to white, but will probably be fairly opaque and will contain a lot of white. After this layer has dried, further layers of more transparent colour are built up over it until the decoration matches the original. To explain in detail this is done would be to embark on a course in oil painting. As a simple example, flesh colour is made up of at least five colours. White, a little grey or blue, black, yellow, and crimson. If you mix all these colours together in any proportions the result will be an opaque putty coloured paint. Applied in transparent layers very thinly, first wltite, and then the lightest touches of blue, grey and black, and then a little yellow and a final coat of transparent palest crimson, it will build tip beautiful flesh tones. The portrait painter teams all about this, and if you are going to do much of this kind of work a good book on oil painting techniques could be lielpfiil.
Perhaps I have made ovcrpainting sound too difficult—but it isn’t really, and it is great fun, and astonishingly good results follow just a little practice.
Here is a list of colours which will cover any range you want and will come in useful for other restoration jobs. You might even get interested in painting in oils, if you aren’t already. Anyone who has an oil paint box will have enough colours and will know enough about painting to go ahead without further purchases except medium. Dry powder pigments in several of the tints below are also very useful for all kinds of restoration work. It isn’t necessary to have all these colours. For small jobs just buy the ones you need and so build up a stock piecemeal. Polyurethane glaze gives a good hard clear finish if a high gloss is required.
Colours. These should be oil colours.
Titanium White Ivory Black Cobalt
Naples Yellow Yellow Ochre Burnt Sienna Burnt Umber Rose Madder Indian Red
Deep Cobalt Green Chrome Green
Artist’s oil and riot Student’s
Paynes Grey
French Ultramarine Cerulean
Winsor Lemon Raw Sienna
Raw Umber Venetian Red Cadmium Red Viridian
Permanent Green
GLASSWARE
Wash glass with liquid detergent in warm water, and brush cut glass gently with a soft brush. Dry it and polish it with a silver cloth. If badly stained cut glass is left to soak overnight in warm water and detergent with a few drops of ammonia added, the dirt will probably come off. Tile cloudy deposit left oil glass by lime in water is the devil to shift. Fill the glass with distilled or rain water, rim tap water, and leave it for a day or two and then scrub gently. If the lime still persists a little spirits of salt may shift it. Spirits of salt is a pretty good shifter of all kinds of stains, and it also makes neat little shot holes in your clothes if you spray it when
brushing!
Bad stains will usually yield to a soaking in a five per cent solution of caustic soda. Metal polish will remove stains on glass. Decanters and bottles with stains which will not yieldto brushing or which cannot be reached can be cleaned with said, preferably silver sand. Put in a small handful of sand, some detergent and a little warm water, enough to allow the sand to swirl around when the bottle is shaken. A careful swirl or two should abrade off the stain. A five per cent solution of nitric acid will clean off wine stains.
Scratches oil glass will sometimes respond to a good Polish with jeweller’s rouge. Glass is a strange substance which does in fact flow, and rubbing with rouge does actually make it flow and fill in the scratches.
Removing Stoppers. Glass stoppers sometimes get firmly stuck in old decanters and glass bottles, and brute force is the worst possible way to shift them. Make up a mixture as follows:
2 parts alcohol
I part glycerine
i part common salt
Paint this oil the stopper, particularly where it enters the bottle or decanter, and leave it for a day. A few gentle taps should then shift it. If this doesn’t work, heat the decanter over a stove, or stand it on a radiator so that the air inside will expand, and force out the stopper. This method will have to be used if a stopper has broken offshort in the neck of a bottle. Keep the piece that comes out for it may be possible to repair it.
Making Lamps out of Bottles. Large glass jars and carboys can be made into lamp stands and this job always looks best-if the jar is to be filled with solid or semi-solid matter such as pebbles, or sand—if the flex passes up through the bottle. If the jar is to be filled with liquid, obviously there are difficulties in preventing leakage through the flex-hole, and in keeping the flex totally insulated from the liquid. Outside fittings are best and safest for liquid filled jars.
Bore holes in glass jars exactly as they are bored in china. The safest way is to start by boring a A” hole with a diamond drill, lubricating constantly with turpentine. Then enlarge the hole with successively bigger drills until it measures which is big enough to take the flex. Start each bigger hole for the follow-up drills with a tungsten carbide bit, and don’t push through too fast or the
will drill
glass wi split. just let the grind gently away. A little practice on a spare milk bottle is advisable if you haven’t done the job before.
Mending Glass
Sticking. On the whole glass is stuck together in the same way as is china. There are one or two small points of differ- ence. The edges of broken glass are very smooth and some roughing up with a diamond scratcher will give the adhesive a better key. Gum strip is used to put tension across the joins as described in the section on sticking china. This is very important when mending glass as a very tight fit is essential to ensure adhesion. When the adhesive leas set, surplus which has squeezed out is removed by rubbing it down with steel wool, not glass paper as this would scratch the glass. Remaining adhesive can be lifted off with a scalpel or a razor blade.
Wine glasses so often break across the stem, and such breaks can be mended with Araldite, but won’t be particularly strong because glass tends to break again near the point of the first break even if the join itself holds firm. Stainless steel bands are sometimes put round stein-breaks, but this is an expert job and the band must be very accurately made so that it can be sprung over the stein and glued tight round the join.
Dowelling. Dowel glass as you dowel china. This is a better method of mending a wine glass stem. The dowel will show, but inside the stein the Aralditc/titan dioxide cement looks rather like frosting and is not unsightly. Glass is more fragile and shatters more easily than china, so take just that much more care when drilling.
Glass that has been mended with epoxy resin can be heated to speed up setting, but remember that glass breaks if exposed to sudden changes of temperature. Therefore it must be put into a cold oven and the heat brought up gradually to about i 5o deg. F. Then switch off the heat and without opening the oven door leave it to cool right off again. The draught caused by opening the door would crack the glass. After an hour the oven should be cool enough and the adhesive set. Only white clear glass may be heated; coloured glass cannot be stoved and the adhesive will have to be left to harden in its own sweet time.
Moulded Repairs. Glass can be repaired with liquid acrylic resin, of which there are several makes on the market. Technovit 4004A dries to a clear glass-like material. It can be polished and it can be coloured. Acrulite and Tensol Acrylic are two other very good materials for this work.
Make plasticise moulds as described in the china section, but always use white plasticise as acrylic will take up colour from coloured plasticise. No parting agent is needed unless the makers of the acrylic so state. Technovit is made up by adding hardening liquid to a powder, and it is then poured direct into the mould, care being taken that there are no air bubbles present or the effect will not be clear. Warm the glass a little before pouring the filler as acrylic gives off heat as it hardens and might crack cold glass.
Acrylics can be bought ready coloured, or can be tinted with powder pigments and made opaque so that it looks like china, rather than glass, so it is quite useful for repairing china of a self colour which requires no further overpainting. Jasperware may be repaired satisfactorily with acrylic.
Surplus acrylic is cleaned from the edges of the join immediately, while it is still liquid. It can be abraded and rubbed away after hardening but this dulls it and there is the danger of scratching the surrounding glass. Acrylic can be polished with silicone carbide spaced grit cloth or paper, grades 150, 24o and 320.
Sometimes you may need a large lump of pseudo glass for a restoration. Acrylic can be poured into a mould, but this means that a model must first be made, and then a mould as described in the sectionon casting and pressing china parts. It is much easier, really, to make the lumps out of Perspex as this material is worked in exactly the same way as wood, and turned on a lathe. The tools—saws, files, drills etc. are lubricated while working with ordinary soap, and the Perspex will have to be polished when all shaping has been done.
Pieces of chandeliers can be replaced with Perspex, and new pedestals made for glass ornaments (see under Perspex).
BEDROOM CHINA
There is still quite a lot of this about and it’s quite pretty. The most obvious use for old chamber pots, slop pails, washbasins, foot baths, ewers, etc. is for flowers, or to hold flower pots. This china has been used for soup tureens, punch bowls etc. mid provided there are no cracks or chips in the china, I suppose there is no reason why not, but personally the idea does not appeal. Like other pottery it can be mended (see China Mending), and a bit of careful re-touching with a paint brush and enamel can brighten things up a bit.
BEESWAX
Beeswax is the natural wax made by the bees when building honeycombs, mid it can be bought at chemists and sonic hardware stores. It is sold as fine grade, white beeswax, or as natural wax which has an orange brown colour. Ofcourse if you keep bees you will have your own. I once left a bowl of natural beeswax from my own bees on a larder shelf. In due course, at a moment of family crisis, a visitor tried to fry some bacon and eggs in it, mistaking it for dripping. The kitchen smelt wonderful for days, but otherwise it was a waste not only of the beeswax, but of the bacon and eggs!
Beeswax by itself is too hard to use as a polish, and various blends can be made. Beeswax melts at about 65 deg. C. and do take care when making polish as the ingredients arc inflammable. Keep an oldsaucepan for the job and have suitable containers with good lids ready for the polish. I keep my old furniture polish tins and re-use them again and again. Use real turpentine, not turpentine substitute.
3 parts white beeswax 8 parts real turpentine
Melt the wax slowly over a low flame, together with the turpentine. Use a double saucepan if possible, or suspend the container in another saucepan with water in it. Colour the polish with stain if you wish. The stain should be added immediately the concoction is removed from the heat, and mixed in well. Put the polish into a tin and close it tightly. Use it just like any other polish when cold; apply with a soft rag and rub hard.
Recipe z. J lb. beeswax real turpentine
Melt the wax in a saucepan over a low flame, adding well
turpentine and mixing until the whole is the consistency of thick custard. Paint the mixture on to the wood with a rag while it is still warm and leave it to dry. Then polish as hard and as long as youlike. This method is best for natural wood surfaces which will absorb a lot of the polish, but not for surfaces which already have a polish on them.
Recipe 3. 8 ozs. beeswax 2 ozs. resin
real turpentine
Melt the resin, beeswax and a little turpentine in a double saucepan over a low flame. When it is all blended together remove it from the meat and allow it to cool, but before it has set stir in enough turpentine to make a soft polish, about I pt. Acid colouring if required.
This is a leather dressing similar to that used by the British MUSCU111.
7 ozs. anhydrous lanolin
I fluid oz. cedarwood oil
I oz. white beeswax
ti fluid ozs. hexane
Hexane is highly inflammable so do not make this mixture up near an open flame, or use the dressing near an open flame. Dissolve the beeswax in the hexane (no heat is required), add the lanoline and blend well, and lastly add the cedarwood oil.
Recipe 5. furniture cream
3 ozs. white wax
8 ozs. real turpentine 8 ozs. warm water liquid ammonia
Melt the white wax over a low flame. Remove the saucepan from the flame and add the turpentine and the warm water and blend it all together. Add the ammonia drop by drop stirring all the time until the mixture is a thick cream. This old recipe for polish should be used with care as ammonia is a solvent for some varnishes but is excellent on wood which does not have an artificial surface of varnish or French polish.
Recipe 6.
pt. real turpentine pt. soft water
2 ozs. beeswax (natural) I oz. white wax
2 squares camphor
i oz. Castile soap
i teaspoonful ammonia
Shred the waxes and the camphor into the turpentine. Shred the soap into the water and simmer tuitil the volume is reduced by half. Cool and add the turpentine and wax mixture. Blend well together and add the ammonia and shake thoroughly. This is a good cleansing furniture polish.
Recipe 7. z ozs. white beeswax
benzene
Flake the beeswax and then add the benzene and stir until the wax has dissolved. This is a useful dressing for preserving wickerwork and canc.
Recipe 8. wax adhesive
5 parts beeswax
5 parts resin
i part real turpentine
Heat all together gently in a double saucepan until the ingredients blend.
Simple beeswax polishes as in Recipe r make an excellent protective coating for bronze, alabaster, iron, steel, marble and slate, as well as for all kinds of wooden furniture and objects.
Various other polishes which do not contain wax are described in the section oil Polishes.
BIRD-CAGES
Large Victorian bird-cages still turn tip in junk shops. I owned and used one, but unfortunately my Siamese cat discovered that the metal rods were not particularly strong, and after I came home from the cinema one night to find a pathetic heap of blue feathers on the floor, a smug cat, and a bent cage, I reverted to modem steel cages and kept the old one as a relic. Many old cages are somehow reminiscent of the Crystal Palace, and are made of dozens of metal rods, either rusted or covered in filth and old paint. The only real answer is to clean each rod separately with emery paper, or steel wool dipped in paint stripper. It’s
hard work on the fingers and is a good job for the long winter evenings, as it can be done while watching television. Solder broken rods (see Soldering). Having cleaned the cage repaint it, or lacquer it with clear metal lacquer. The application of paint or lacquer by brushing is a tedious job on such an object; spraying might be easier, but to be sure of covering all sides of the rods; dipping is the best answer. If the cage can be taken into sections each section should be dealt with separately, otherwise you are going to need a huge container and an awful lot of paint or lacquer to dip the object effectively.
BLEACHING
Colour or stains can be removed by bleaching. Sunlight will bleach, but it is chemical bleaching which is described in this section. Because the action of bleach is irrevocable take care. It is all too easy to remove not only the stain and the colour but the underlying material; and it is a cardinal rule to use bleach well diluted and to strengthen it gradually if necessary. Always try out bleach on a part of the material where it can do least damage, before making any general applications.
Hydrogen peroxide, and Milton are good bleaches. To bleach very fragile articles which cannot be rubbed, soak a Plaster of Paris slab with hydrogen peroxide and then place the object to be bleached just above the slab, within a quarter of an inch. Do this in an empty drawer or a small cupboard to confine and concentrate the vapours.
Household bleaches such as Doinestos, Brobat, and Parazone are fine for bleaching certain articles, but are strong and may need dilution and they should not be mixed with any other type of cleaner lest you succeed in making chlorine gas which is highly toxic.
Ch bromine T, which is white powder to mix with distilled water, makes a bleach for prints.
Raw wood is bleached, either after stripping down or to remove stains, by swabbing with ordinary domestic bleach. Adjust the strength of the solution according to the degree of lightness required.
gen in water, freeing the oxygen, and this means that it has strong bleaching properties. It is possible to make an apparatus for bleaching prints etc., but I must point out that chlorine gas is dangerous stuff and the greatest care should be taken when using it as a bleach, and all children and animals should be miles away.
The first necessity is a flat box large enough to take the biggest prints you intend to bleach (see Fig. 5). It must be well made with airtight joints. A sheet of thick glass should be used as a lid, for it enables you to see what is going on, and it must fit tile top of the box snugly. If you are doing a proper job, make a frame top and hinge it for the box to drop in on to a narrow ledge, and putty the glass into the frame. Fix a handle to tile lid so that it can be lifted lip easily. Bore a hole in the side of the box and cement a piece of glass tubing to take the gas pipe. Having made your box, test it with a puff or two of cigarette smoke to make sure it is gas tight.
Get a gallon cider jar with a well fitting rubber cork with a hole in it to take a short length of glass tube. Join the tube in the cork to the tube in the side of the box with a rubber tube. Place another sheet of glass in the bottom of the box, damp the print which is to be bleached and lay it in the box. Close the lid. Put two ounces of bleaching powder (chloride of lime) into the jar, pour in a cupful of accumulator acid, and close the jar at once. If this job can be done in the open air, all the better. If there is any leakage of gas, keep away until it has dispersed. When the print is sufficiently bleached, just open the lid and let the air blow away the gas, always being careful not to inhale.
The amount of gas which will be made by the quantities given here is not enough to give a dangerous concentration, but nevertheless it is not to be fooled with. Don’t do this job in a room with birds, fish, cats, dogs or children in it. Or even white mice.
BONE AND IVORY
Small bone and ivory objects—card cases, chessmen, statuettes, fans, needles, inlays and small carvings turn up from time to time in bad condition and in need of cleaning. Impregnate really badly broken or chipped or cracked pieces with melted paraffin wax, which will hold the piece together and preserve it. Warm the object first over a radiator or in an airing cupboard, and put it right into the runny wax. Lift it out after a few minutes and wipe off the surplus.
Ivory goes yellow with age especially if it is not exposed to light. Sometimes this colour is pleasant and is best left alone, but things like knife handles, piano keys or fan sticks do look better white. Make up a bleaching paste of whiting and 20 volume hydrogen peroxide and coat the piece with it. The paste must be stiff or the ivory will absorb too much liquid and swell. Stand the object out in the air and sunshine until the paste has dried, then wash it off and dry the piece thoroughly with a soft cloth. A little almond oil applied with a soft rag will leave a nice protective coating.
To clean bone and ivory which just needs dirt and dust removing from crevices, use methylated spirit on a duster, or on a soft brush. Never use water. If there are spots which won’t come off, try rubbing the spot with a little whiting and methylated spirit on a cotton wool swab on a cocktail stick.
Bone and ivory can be polished with tripoli, or rotten-stone or carborundum products, or with silica preparations and modern metal polishes.
Stick broken pieces of ivory together with Durofix or Araldite. Make sure the surfaces to be joined are clean, and bleach out any staining left by old glue as above.
BOOKS
The top edges of books get filthy and although loose dust can be removed with a soft brush or an old fashioned feather-duster, real dirt is hard to clear. Holding the book very tightly shut it so that only the top edges show, rub gently with fine sandpaper folded to the correct size. This could be rather too fierce for a valuable book, so try soft breadcrumbs, or all art eraser (see Fig. 6).
The edges of many old books are either gilded or painted, and it is quite easy to give these a new lease of life. Ordinary water colour paint mixed with size instead of water is brushed on. The book must be well cramped with the covers folded out of the way, and the exposed pages protected, or the paint may colour more than it is meant to.
To re-gild, kestoration Wax or Treasure Wax Gilt should be rubbed on the tightly closed edges with your finger, and then polished with a soft cloth to remove the surplus and make it shine.
Leather covers on books must be cleaned occasionally with a little leather polish such as Sheerwax, but remember that on most books the leather is almost paper thin, and cannot take too much rough handling. Very often old books are quite spoiled by r pieces of the leather being torn away to show the cardboard cover, or else the leather on the spine is split or perished. To mend these tears, cut out the bad parts, clean off the old glue and muck, gently lift and stick the new piece of leather into position, being careful to tuck the new edges under the old. The leather for this job should be as thin as possible, and do pare die tucked in edges carefully, so that the joins do not make a nasty bulge. For any decoration that has to be done, see the section on Leather.
Print on book titles and authors’ names with Indian Ink or Reeves Transfer Foil, which is used rather like carbon paper. You will probably find that it needs a little practice to make a neat job of the lettering, especially on the curved spine.
If a book has the side cover torn away from the spine, Sellotape X will make a strong lengdiwiscjoin, with a small gap left between the two edges, so that there is enough play left, when the book is closed. Sheets of coloured paper cut to size and pasted over the end page and the cardboard cover look neat. Scccotine or paperhanger’s paste are useful adhesives for binding and paper work.
Stained and damp pages are dealt with in the same way as prints (see section on cleaning prints), but this can be rather difficult without taking the book to pieces. When the odd page is dirty or stained, particularly at the begin- ning or end, a little gentle dabbing with carbon tetrachloride, petrol or benzine should remove most greasy marks and fingerprints. Wax is best dealt with by placing a piece of blotting paper under the spot, and ironing lightly with a hot iron.
If a book should happen to be dropped in the bath, dry it by putting tissue paper or sheets of blotting paper between the leaves, through half the book. Then put an even weight on the book and leave it in a dry place, perhaps in the draught of a fan heater or a hair dryer, but do not put it too near a radiator or fire. The current of air is necessary to carry away moisture. Treat the second half of the book the same way when the first has dried.
Mend torn pages with white paste (see recipe under Adhesives), as other glues will show either too grey or brown. On frayed or ragged overlapping edges, put a little paste on one surface, and place the torn sheet exactly over it. If a comer or edge of a sheet is missing, cut another piece of paper, similar in texture and colour, slightly larger than the missing portion, and stick it on to the torn piece. A tidier job is made by trimming the torn piece first. When a page is torn across the print, mend it by sticking the thinnest possible Japanese paper over the top. If the print is large and the lines well spaced, cut little strips of matching paper, and stick them in between the print, although this is horribly fiddly. The edge of a torn page should always be reinforced so that it will not tear again in the same place. Whole pages tom out of books are best repaired with long strips of matching paper pasted down the length of the tears. ScIlotape X can be used, but if there are quite a lot of pages out, it will make clumsy joins, and ordinary sellotape is not good as the edges of it stay sticky and pick up bits of dirt and dust, making a grey mark.
Insect infestation in books is dealt with under Inscas.
