The RURAL NEW.YORKER 
659 
Simple Science 
By Dr. F. D. Crane 
Scale from Hard Water 
Can you give me any advice as to 
how to remove the lime which accumu¬ 
lates in our water front? The water 
which we have to use contains much 
lime; this fills the waterfront in course 
of time, and makes the waterfront use¬ 
less, if not dangerous. I have to change 
waterfront twice a year. We have used 
muriatic acid—but that does not do the 
work to perfection. We need something 
which will soften the lime so that it may 
be easily removed. r. G. 
Naples, N. Y. 
The condition is, as you realize, a 
source of danger. However, in the case 
of the water which holds as much lime as 
that, there js little to be done except put 
in a settling tank and treat with a little 
ammonia and ammonium carbonate solu¬ 
tion, treating the day before; in fact, 
you have to have two tanks to allow for 
settling. There is nothing much you can 
do to the clogged waterfront other than 
the aci'd treatment, which you already 
know about. Better consider rain water 
and a pressure tank if you do not put in 
a settling tank. 
have to take some chances, but this will 
work if used with care. 
Preserving Fish Scrap; Red Lime Wash 
1. What is the simplest method of sav¬ 
ing fish scrap for chicken feed later in 
(lie season? 2. Is there a cheap, simple 
method of making a red wash similar to 
whitewash to apply to outbuildings? Can 
metallic be used as a coloring basis? 
1. The only safe way with fish scrap 
is to dry at once, before it has even begun 
to spoil, and dry very dry, too. The 
people who work on a huge scale boil 
it first, getting out the fish oil and the 
fish glue, and then dry the residue with 
their waste heat. On a small scale it is 
a question if it is worth while; however, 
you might try it. We would be very 
glad to know how it comes out. But 
remember it must be bone dry and then 
kept in a dry place. 
2. Ordinary whitewash may be colored 
red with any available oxide of iron; 
“Venetian red” is the trade name. 
“Metallic” may be a mixture, but is 
usually mostly iron. You can get suit¬ 
able colors at any large paint store. 
Preventing Frosted Windows 
Please tell It. N.-Y. readers that a 
Russian cure for frosted windows is to 
place one or more glass tumblers with 
a half-inch of strong sulphuric acid in 
each, between the sashes. A window 
2 1 /fxS ft. needs two tumblers. The acid 
picks up the water and keeps the air too 
dry to frost, and one lot of acid usually 
lasts one season. Of course, it is not for 
careless people, but I never heard a com¬ 
plaint while I was in Russia. o. R. 
Brooklyn, N. Y. 
Well, we will take a chance and tell 
them. We knew of this cure, but hesi¬ 
tated, since we are always shy of sug¬ 
gesting strong sulphuric acid for any pur¬ 
pose. There is another harmless chemical 
which can be used the same way, an¬ 
hydrous chloride of calcium, but the 
trouble is to get it. It is worth only a 
few cents an ounce, but only chemical 
supply houses carry it. However, a 
local druggist might order it at a rea¬ 
sonable advance. 
Gilding with Gold Powder 
IIow can I gild picture frames with 
gold powder? H. M. J. W. 
You may mix the powder with japan 
drier and a small addition of boiled lin¬ 
seed oil, or you may apply this mixture 
first and then dust with the powder when 
nearly dry. Amyl acetate with just a 
little celluloid dissolved in it is often 
used; it is called “banana oil” from the 
odor. The results will never look as well 
as genuine gold, but to apply the latter 
takes an expert. 
Removing Dents from Piano 
IIow can I take out dents on a ma¬ 
hogany piano? D. B. F. 
Burdette, N. Y. 
Here is a process from a number of 
recipes which may work: Wet the part 
with warm water, double a piece of brown 
paper five or six times, soak it and lay 
it, on t he place; apply on that a hot flat¬ 
iron till the moisture is evaporated; re¬ 
peat if need be. A slight dent may often 
be removed by moistening and then hold¬ 
ing near it a red-hot poker. That cure 
will usually destroy the finish, which must 
be restored according to the method origi¬ 
nally used on the article. 
Treatment of Frozen Vegetables 
How can potatoes and other vegetables 
be frozen, judging from the taste and 
consistency after cooking, and still be 
apparently well preserved in the store and 
in the home after delivery? c. K. L. 
If really frozen, it is done very lightly, 
but the trick is to cool very slowly and 
then to warm still more slowly. The 
changes which you associate with freezing 
take place more or less about the freezing 
point, but if the cooling and warming 
are both done so slowly that the cells 
adapt, themselves to the strain, they do 
not burst, and so decay, which is the en¬ 
trance of germs to broken cells and 
growth there, does not take place. But 
the chemical changes at low temperatures 
na\e taken place, and can be detected by 
the taste. However, the food is prac¬ 
tically as nutritious, if no decay lias 
taken place. 
Scale in Teakettle 
My very hard water has coat 
aluminum teakettle. What will ti 
the deposit? A 
We went into this matter a few i 
ago. and actual trial showed that 
hydrochloric (muriatic) acid woi 
move the lime deposit if 
and constant watching, 
acid swabbed oil with a 
atiek can also be used, 
that the aluminum is already pi 
phues from local action, and tha 
Pits will be eaten through. Y< 
used wil 
Rather 
rag wire 
The dai 
Refrigeration Without Ice 
Is there anything that could be put in 
cans placed in water that would make it 
colder? Would ammonia do it. or strong 
brine, and if so would cans small in dia¬ 
meter be best? j. j. r. 
Nothing that is practical on a small 
scale. Brine, previously cooled by the 
expansion of ammonia, is used in ice 
machines to take up the heat of the water, 
and so freeze it. but the machines are 
large and expensive. 
Manufacturing Wood Alcohol 
What is wood alcohol made of? A 
neighbor says that it is made of grain 
and is poisoned with a wood preparation, 
while another says it is made of wood. 
Ivatonah, N. Y. n. w. s. 
Wood alcohol is one of the products of 
the destructive distillation of wood, and 
in that sense is made from it. The wood 
is placed in closed retorts and heated, a 
mixture of wood tar, crude acetic acid, 
known as pyroligneous acid, that is, fire¬ 
wood acid, wood alcohol, acetone and 
various gases comes from the still, and 
a fine grade of charcoal is left in the 
still. The above mixture is purified by 
several treatments, the acid being picked 
up by lime, the tar washed and run off 
as such, and the other fluids distilled sev¬ 
eral times and split into the several con¬ 
stituents. One of the products of final 
purification is the wood alcohol, which 
chemists call methyl alcohol, and which 
is derived from the simplest carbon-hy¬ 
drogen compound, methane, marsh gas. 
This is found in nature as “natural gas,” 
but there is no commercial process as 
yet for making wood alcohol from it, al¬ 
though it is real easy on paper; all you 
have to do is take off a hydrogen and put 
in its place a water residue. This is not 
so very hard to do in practice, but it is 
a matter of comparative costs. 
The next simplest carbon-hydrogen 
compound, which is merely two methanes 
which have each lost a hydrogen, and 
have stuck together, is called ethane, and 
that is found in plenty in some kinds of 
natural gas. So we might take that and 
cut out a hydrogen and put in the water 
residue, hydroxyl, in its place, and we 
would have ethyl or grain alcohol. But 
it is so much cheaper to get billions of 
yeast cells to work for their room and 
board in a weak sugar solution, that prac¬ 
tically all ethyl alcohol is made that way, 
and since it was first made from grain, 
the name grain alcohol sticks to it, 
though it is now largely made of waste 
molasses. Denatured alcohol is grain al¬ 
cohol to which some wood alcohol and 
benzine or other petroleum residue has 
been added, making it quite poisonous to 
drink, but leaving it fit for most other 
manufacturing purposes. There are also 
special denatured alcohols, for particular 
manufacturers, in which other denatur- 
ants are used, which will not harm the 
process or products. 
Some day you will be told that grain 
alcohol is made out of wood, and that 
has been done and is still beiug tried, but 
is not the success that was hoped. The 
wood is cooked with acid, by which 
means a part of it is changed to a fer¬ 
mentable sugar, and then the yeast cells 
are set to work, and they make a genuine 
grain or ethyl alcohol and not wood al¬ 
cohol. Something of the same sort is be¬ 
ing done with sulphite wood pulp liquor, 
but the regular grain alcohol people do 
not seem to be scared by the success so 
far clai- ed for the product. But true 
wood, methyl, alcohol has not as yet been 
made by any practical fermentation pro¬ 
cess. 
The reason wood alcohol is so much 
more poisonous than grain alcohol seems 
to be that while grain alcohol oxidizes in 
the system to the comparatively harmless 
acetic acid, the wood alcohol goes by way 
of formaldehyde to formic acid, which is 
a tissue poison in itself, and so even a 
little wood alcohol in grain alcohol makes 
it quite too poisonous to drink. 
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