VARNISH AND PAINT EXPERIMENTS. 35 



VARNISH AND PAINT EXPERIMENTS. 

 ANALYSES OF THE TURPENTINES AND VARNISHES EMPLOYED. 



In order to have a strictly comparable series of experiments on 

 :he value of wood turpentine as a thinner, varnishes and paints were 

 wepared and thinned with several different turpentines. That there 

 night be no question as to the authenticity of the samples, the 

 uthor personally collected them and was present when the paints 

 md varnishes were made. Four turpentines, such as are usually 

 bund on the market, were used in these experiments a gum spirits, a 

 iteam-distilled turpentine, and two samples of destructively distilled 

 ,urpentine, both of which had been distilled after washing with soda, 

 ^one of the wood turpentine was as good as can be prepared by care- 

 ul refining; all except No. 3 contained much heavy oil which gave 

 hem a marked odor and undoubtedly made the varnishes dry more 

 lowly. Results with these turpentines, therefore, would naturally 

 wove more unfavorable to wood turpentine than if the properly 

 efined article had been used. Analyses of the turpentines used in 

 hese experiments are given in the following table : 



Analyses of the turpentine used in varnish experiments. 



It will be noticed from these analyses that according to the distilla- 

 jon tests the gum spirits and one of the destructively distilled tur- 

 pentines should be ranked as quick-drying turpentines, with the 

 idvantage in favor of the gum spirits; while the steam-distilled and 

 lie other destructively distilled turpentine are slow-drying, the 

 atter being the slower in the initial stages, but the former requiring 

 onger to dry hard. It should be noted that 74 per cent of the steam- 

 listilled turpentine distills below 170 C., i. e., 26 per cent of the tur- 



