Practical Graining Part 5

There are many kinds of varnishes and finishes made especially for application to exposed work, outside doors, etc., but my experience with many of them has been anything but satisfactory. There may be some particular kind of varnish that will stand exposure in this climate without cracking or turning white, but I have never seen any such. I would like to find some article that will withstand the changes of temperature to which it would be subjected in the New England climate--say one hundred and twenty to one hundred and thirty degrees annually--and I do not expect ever to find any such, as, when the varnish has been applied to exposed work and the gum has become thoroughly hardened, cracking will of necessity ensue, for the reason that heat causes the expansion of the material to which the varnish is applied, and, the varnish being thoroughly hardened, so that it cannot expand, it must crack in obedience to the law of nature that heat expands. Cracking may result from inability to contract after having expanded from heat. This is allowing for no internal complications in the varnish, and what is written above wholly applies to varnish that is exposed to the weather, and is based on what seems to be practical experience.

I am living in a house that is grained in oil on the outside; the clapboards and tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs on the southwest side were chosen for testing the varnish. To prevent any misunderstanding, I will state the manner in which the work was done. The clapboards are No. 1 spruce, the tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs are pine and cypress. The carpentry work was done in July, 1886, and stood three days before being primed. The priming color was mixed as follows:--One hundred pounds of white lead, to which were added about twenty-five pounds of yellow ochre, a small quant.i.ty of j.a.pan drier, and thinned with best raw linseed oil. After being primed for two weeks, the work was grounded, using the priming color that was left, with enough lead added to make a groundwork for oak. The tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs are done in cherry. The work was not grained until October, 1886, and neither wax nor anything else was used for megilp. The varnishes were nearly all applied on the tenth day after the work was grained; the day was warm and bright, and each varnish was put on just as it came from the factory, without thinners of any kind. Each was poured into a clean vessel and a new brush was used, so as to give each kind of varnish an even chance; and the result is below stated.

Seventeen kinds of varnishes, hardwood finishes, spar composition, etc., were applied as stated, and the result was highly disastrous, as, with two exceptions, they all cracked in less than twelve months. The two exceptions were, first, a mixture of linseed oil two parts to j.a.pan drier one part; second, a preparation said to contain ninety per cent.

of linseed oil. This is the only thing on the side of the house to-day (February 29, 1888) that has any gloss; all the others except the oil and the drier are in various stages of imitation of alligator skin, or they have cracked so minutely as wholly to destroy the gloss. Some of the hardwood finishes cracked in twenty-eight days after being applied, and their makers claimed that they could be used on outside work without danger of cracking. The longest time that any varnish stood without cracking was slightly over eleven months, and that kind cost five dollars per gallon, and was sold for wearing body varnish.[A] I have some of these varnishes and finishes applied to inside work, and at present they show no signs of cracking, but I am afraid that it will be only a question of time when they too will crack. For interior work I am in favor of using sh.e.l.lac over grained work in preference to varnish, and I have sh.e.l.lac applied to the doors of my rooms, the casings, etc., being finished with first-quality varnish; so that I will have an opportunity of observing their respective merits and durability. Sh.e.l.lac finish is less glaring than varnish, and has the advantage of drying quickly; so that it escapes the dust which is invariably present in new buildings. It can be rubbed down, if necessary, in the same manner as hardwood, and where graining is done to match wood finished in sh.e.l.lac it makes the work look uniform. I have yet to see a job of new work that has cracked after being sh.e.l.lacked if properly grounded. There are some of the old-fashioned varnishes that stand without cracking on inside work. One case I remember where an office had been grained and varnished when the factory was built, and, so far as known, had been revarnished but once for thirty-two years afterward. There was no sign of cracks in the varnish, and those people who profess that the cause of cracking is due to wax in the graining color would be surprised to see that the graining color in this case appeared to contain plenty of wax.

Varnish may stand for a long time on inside work without cracking; but the reverse is the rule in my experience; for varnish that has been bought from the factory expressly for inside work, and for which a good price has been paid, has cracked in less than six months after being applied, and this was on new wood; so that there was apparently nothing to hasten its early decay.

Some seven years ago I varnished a table-top which had been grained. I chose what a master carriage painter called one of the best makes of rubbing varnish, and applied three coats to the table, rubbing it on the third day after each coat. It looked nicely when finished, but in less than four months it had cracked. The cracks finally became so deep that they were faced up with putty; and this was a solid walnut table-top which had been thoroughly planed off and sh.e.l.lacked before being painted and grained. This is but one of many instances which have led me altogether to discard varnish for any work I wish to preserve; and where interior work is not too much exposed to wear I prefer to leave it as grained in oil or to sh.e.l.lac it, and for exterior work to give it an occasional coat of oil and drier rather than to varnish it.

I have not mentioned the names of the makers of the varnishes, but they were some of the representative makers of the country, and most of the labels expressly stated that the contents of the packages would not crack, blister or turn white.

I hope that the experience of others has been more favorable than has mine, but we must speak of things as we find them.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote A: October, 1890.--The preparation containing 90 per cent.

linseed oil cracked badly in fourteen months: the oil and dryer cracked soon after, due, I presume, to gum in the j.a.pan.]

CHAPTER XV.

GRAINING CONSIDERED AS A FINE ART.

Graining--that is painting in imitation of wood or of marble--is generally looked upon as a business branch of the house-painting which any competent painter is, or should be, able to do, but in reality we find that only about four or five men in each large city do all the best work in this line, and make a business of it, doing nothing else--"graining for the trade," as it is called. One grainer will do the work of twenty or more paint-shops, and if he is a first-cla.s.s workman, he will earn more than double the wages of an ordinary painter, and will find employment all the year round.

Now, any large city can boast of twenty to thirty artists--landscape, marine, portrait, etc.--whose work is praised and is accepted at art-galleries, and in some cases brings enormous prices at sales; but why is it that their work is lauded to the skies; when at best it is but an imitation of nature, and when an equally good imitation in another form is (as a rule) condemned by architects and critics as unworthy a place in artistic residences or in the more prominent rooms of such houses? Any person of ordinary intelligence can at a glance discover that an oil painting is a mere copy or representation of nature, but the grain of wood or of marble can be so closely imitated that it is impossible even for an expert to detect at a glance that it is counterfeit, and a close examination sometimes fails to reveal whether it is genuine or not.

Some people think that successfully to imitate the color and the grain of any wood or any marble is as much of an art as is the representation of a landscape, for, while there are dozens of artists who can faithfully reproduce a landscape on canvas, there are few who can make a pine door look like the oak or cherry jamb and casing that surround it, as first-cla.s.s grainers often have to do, and do so well that not one person in a thousand could tell the real wood from the imitation.

And not only is the wood imitated by such men, but mouldings, cornices, panels, etc., are so faithfully represented as to pa.s.s for such except on close inspection.

It is said that in order to become an artist one must be born with certain qualifications or he will fail to be successful: this is equally true in the case of the grainer; and some people think that in order to become a first-cla.s.s grainer more gifts are required at birth than if the person were destined to become an artist, as the artist generally has before him models or the original of his picture, while the grainer is supposed to imitate whatever kind of wood or marble is called for--in most cases, without any of the original before him and doing the work from recollection of the grain of the particular wood or marble he is imitating. While it is very true that the average imitation of wood or marble is poorly done, still the whole business should not be condemned, and any large city can furnish ill.u.s.trations of the fact that graining is so well done as to deceive workers in wood; and they ought to be competent judges.

The idea of representing wood by painting is as old as any branch of the business, and, though excellent work has been done in days gone by, the efforts of the foremost grainers of the present time will favorably compare with those of any age, as, with new inventions to aid them, they have taken rapid strides toward perfection.

CHAPTER XVI.

THE TOOLS USED BY GRAINERS.

Steel combs (Fig. 1) are four or five inches wide, with teeth of three regular sizes--course, medium and fine. They may be used for all woods where the grain is strongly marked, whether the work is done in oil or in distemper; there is also a four-inch steel comb with teeth graduated from coa.r.s.e to fine (Fig. 2) that is often useful; a few one- or two-inch steel combs are handy for use on mouldings or on odd corners.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 1.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 2.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 3.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 4.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 5.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 6.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 7.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 8.]

Leather combs (Fig. 3) can be purchased from most of the large dealers in painters' materials, but they are inferior to combs cut from the best sheet rubber. In making the latter choose a piece of rubber measuring about two by four inches and not over a quarter of an inch.

Cut the teeth on each of the four inch sides, making those on one side coa.r.s.e and those on the other side fine, thus you have two combs in one, and by turning over the comb different lines can be made; do not cut the notches of the comb too deep, and leave considerable s.p.a.ce for the face of the teeth. A rubber comb can be often used, especially on rough work, without covering the teeth with a rag, as being soft it conforms to the inequalities of the surface, and leaves a more distinct pattern than does a leather comb.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 9.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 10.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 11.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 12.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 13.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 14.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 15.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 16.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 17.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 18.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 19.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 20.]

In representing the grain of oak, the tracks of the steel comb should cross or interlock so as to make a series of disconnected lines similar to the pores of the wood; for ash and other straight-grained woods, the grains should never interlock but appear clean and sharp in regular order from the side of the hearts to the edges of the board.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 21.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 22.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 23.]