62 MISCELLANEOUS FARM SUBJECTS 



Dusting brushes made of stiff bristles are useful for cleaning 

 the surface before painting. For cleaning rusted metal surfaces, 

 steel-wire brushes (2 or 3 inches wide and 6 inches long with wires 

 about 3 inches long) are frequently necessary. 



If ready-mixed paints are bought the cans may serve as buckets, 

 but if the paint is mixed from the paste a strong tin bucket large 

 enough to allow for stirring the paint will be necessary. Scraping 

 knives and putty knives are necessary tools for the painter, and it is 

 well to have one or two of each, but a very good scraper can be im- 

 provised for a piece of sheet iron, and an old kitchen knife may 

 be ground to a square end and converted into a very serviceable putty 

 knife. A paint strainer is useful, but two thicknesses of cheesecloth 

 tied over the top of a bucket answers practically as well. Paint should 

 be strained before using it. 



Care of Brushes. Brushes for applying oil paints must be well 

 cleaned after using, though for keeping overnight it is generally 

 sufficient to wrap them in several thicknesses of paper. Some paint- 

 ers keep their brushes overnight by putting them in water. . If, how- 

 ever, the brush is not to be used for several days, the paint should be 

 washed out of it. Turpentine is one of the most satisfactory mate- 

 rials for washing a brush ; a brush can generally be washed as well 

 with kerosene, which is much cheaper. After washing off the paint 

 with kerosene the brush should be rinsed with gasoline or benzine, 

 then thoroughly shaken and well washed with soap and warm water. 



Brushes used with whitewash or calcimine should simply be 

 washed and not put in the same liquids in which the brushes used for 

 oil paints are kept. If a brush has been used for shellac varnish it 

 should be kept in alcohol or in the varnish itself. In general a var- 

 nish brush may be kept in the varnish in which it is used. Water 

 paints such as whitewash and calcimine dry in the ordinary sense; 

 that is, by evaporation of the liquid, which in the case of the two 

 paints mentioned is water. 



The formation of a varnish-like film by the so-called drying of 

 linseed oil is an exceedingly important operation in the drying of oil 

 paints. Certain substances, compounds of lead and manganese, if dis- 

 solved in the oil, hasten drying. Boiled oil which contains com- 

 pounds of lead or manganese, or both, will dry more rapidly than 

 raw linseed oil. Instead of using boiled oil, however, the drying of 

 the oil in paints is generally hastened by the addition of liquids 

 known as driers. These liquids are composed of compounds of lead 

 and manganese generally thinned with either turpentine or benzine, 

 and are known as japan or japan driers. While the use of a drier is 

 necessary in a great many paints, the amount used should be small. 

 There is another objection to the use of a large amount of drier, and 

 that is that the film produced is not so duraole as one produced by 

 raw linseed oil alone or by the use of a raw oil containing the proper 

 amount of drier. There are a number of other oils which have the 

 property of drying like linseed oil, but none of them is the equal 

 of linseed oil for a paint vehicle. 



