=Painting.=—­The next process is painting.  It frequently happens in cabinet work that a faulty place is not discovered until after the work is cleaned off; the skill of the polisher is then required to paint it to match the other.  A box containing the following colours in powder will be found of great utility, and when required for use they should be mixed with French polish and applied with a brush.  The pigments most suitable are:  drop black, raw sienna, raw and burnt umber, Vandyke brown, French Naples yellow (bear in mind that this is a very opaque pigment), cadmium yellow, madder carmine (these are expensive), flake white, and light or Venetian red; before mixing, the colours should be finely pounded.  The above method of painting, however, has this objection for the best class of furniture, that the effects of time will darken the body of the piece of furniture, whilst the painted portion will remain very nearly its original colour.  In first-class work, therefore, stained polishes or varnishes should be applied instead of these pigments.

=Dyed Polishes.=—­The methods of dyeing polish or varnish are as follows:  for a red, put a little alkanet-root or camwood dust into a bottle containing polish or varnish; for a bright yellow, a small piece of aloes; for a yellow, ground turmeric or gamboge; for a brown, carbonate of soda and a very small quantity of dragon’s blood; and for a black, a few logwood chips, gall-nuts, and copperas, or by the addition of gas-black.

The aniline dyes (black excepted) are very valuable for dyeing polishes, the most useful being Turkey-red, sultan red, purple, and brown.  A small portion is put into the polish, which soon dissolves it, and no straining is required.  The cheapest way to purchase these dyes is by the ounce or half-ounce.  The penny packets sold by chemists are too expensive, although a little goes a long way.

CHAPTER II.

STAINS AND IMITATIONS.

In consequence of the high price demanded for furniture made of the costly woods, the art of the chemist has been called into requisition to produce upon the inferior woods an analogous effect at a trifling expense.  The materials employed in the artificial colouring of wood are both mineral and vegetable; the mineral is the most permanent, and when caused by chemical decomposition within the pores it acts as a preservative agent in a greater or less degree.  The vegetable colouring matters do not penetrate so easily, probably on account of the affinity of the woody fibre for the colouring matter, whereby the whole of the latter is taken up by the parts of the wood with which it first comes into contact.  Different intermediate shades, in great variety, may be obtained by combinations of colouring matters, according to the tint desired, and the ideas of the stainer.  The processes technically known as “grounding and ingraining” are partly chemical and partly mechanical, and are designed to teach the various modes of operation whereby the above effects can be produced.  We will commence with