Page:Cyclopedia of Painting-Armstrong, George D (1908).djvu/186

178 allowed to settle, and the clear liquid poured off for use. Sufficient lime-water is mixed with the graining color and well beaten up. But graining by this method is liable to fade, the lime destroying the color, and causing the paint to crack. Rain-water used alone and beaten up thoroughly with the color has many advantages; it does not exert injurious action, the color does not spread and as soon as the color has set the water evaporates.

The best megilp, seldom, however, used for graining on account of the expense, is made from mastic varnish and boiled oil. To make it, pour the boiled oil into the varnish, and use the jelly formed by the mixture. As a hard and fast rule cannot be laid down for mixing graining colors, the proportions depending on the conditions under which the work is done, the colors should always be tested before use. The color should rub out cleanly, easily spread, and the lines left, by the comb should keep their place, not running into each other or settling down. A method of oak graining now seldom practiced consisted in first laying the markings in with a flat, square-edged fitch, dipped in a mixture of sweet oil and beeswax. When this was dry, the graining colors, made up with weak beer, were applied. When the work had thoroughly dried, the beeswax was carefully washed off with turpentine. Ordinary graining color is best made with about equal parts of oil and turpentine, to which is added paste driers, one-eighth of the whole bulk, with sufficient coloring matter.

The coloring pigments used as ingredients of all oak grounding and graining paints may be briefly classified as either opaque or transparent. Of the former class are the chromes, yellow ochres and Venetian red, which should be used only in making stains for grounding paints. Raw and burnt sienna, or terra di sienna, raw and burnt Turkey umber and vandyke brown may be considered as being transparent, though the quality is possessed by them in a varying degree. They are sufficiently translucent to give