Orange Colored Grounds

Orange grounds may be made of yellow mixed with vermillion or carmine, just as a bright or rather inferior color is wanted. The yellow should always be in quantity to make a good full color, and the red added in proportion to the depth of shade. If there is not a good full body of yellow, the color will look watery, or bare, as it is technically termed.

Purple Japan Grounds

This is made by a mixture of lake and Prussian blue or carmine, or for an inferior color vermilion, and treated as the foregoing. When the ground is laid on and perfectly dried, a fine coat of pure boilled nut oil then laid on and perfectly dried, is a good method to have a japan, not liable to crack. But a better plan is to use this oil in the varnish given, the first coat, after the ground is laid on, and which should contain considerable of pure terpentine. In every case where oil is used for any purpose for varnish, it is all the better if turpentine is mixed with it. Turpentine enables oils to mix with either alcohol or water. Alkalies have this property also.

Black Japan

1. Asphaltum three ounces, boiled oil four quarts, burnt umber eight ounces. Mix by heat, and when cooling thin with turpentine. 2. Amber twelve ounces, asphaltum two ounces; fuse by heat, add boiled oil half a pint, resin two ounces; when cooling add sixteen ounces oil of turpentine. Both are used to varnish metals.

Japan Black For Leather

1. Burnt umber four ounces, true asphaltum two ounces, boiled oil two quarts. Dissolve the asphaltum by heat in a little of the oil, add the burnt umber ground in oil, and the remainder of the oil, mix, cool and thin with turpentine. Flexible. 2. Shellac one part, wood naphtha four parts, dissolve, and color with lampblack, Inflexible.

Transparent Japan

Oil of turpentine four ounces, oil of lavender three ounces, camphor one-half drachm, copal one ounce; dissolve. Used to japan tin, but quick copal varnish is mostly used instead.

Japanners' Copal Varnish

Pale African copal seven pounds, fuse, add clarified linseed oil one half gallon, boil for five minutes, remove it into he topen air, add boiling oil of turpentine three gallons, mix well, strain it into the cistern, and cover it up immediately. Used to varnish furniture, and by japanners, coacemakers, etc. Dries in 15 minutes, and may be polished as soon as hard.

Tortoise Shell Japan

This varnish is prepared by taking of good linseed oil one gal Ion, and of umber half a pound, and boiling them together until the oil becomes very brown and thick, when they are strained through a cloth and boiled again until the composition is about the consistence of pitch, when it is fit for use. Having prepared this varnish, clean well the copper or iron plate or vessel that is to be varnished, (japanned,) and then lay vermillion, mixed with shellac varnish, or with drying oil, diluted with turpentine, very thinly on the places intended to imitate the clean parts of the tortoise shell. When the vermillion is dry brush over the whole with the above umber varnish diluted to a due consistence with turpentine, and when it is set and firm, it must be put into a stove and undergo a strong heat for a long time, even two weeks will not hurt it. This is the ground for those beautiful snuff boxed and tea boards which are so much admired, and those grounds can be decorated with all kinds of paintings that fancy may suggest, and the work is all the better to be finished in an annealing oven.

Painting Japan Work

The colors to be painted are tempered, generally, in oil, which should have at least one-fourth of its weight of gum sandarach, or mastic dissolved in it, and it should be well diluted with turpentine, that the colors may be laid on thin and evenly. In some instances it does well to put on water colors or grounds of gold, which a skilful hand can do and manage so as to make the work appear as if it was embossed. These water colors are best prepared by means of isinglass size, mixed with honey, or sugar candy. These colors when laid on must receive a number of upper coats of the varnish we have described before.

Japanning Old Tea-Trays

First clean them thoroughly with soap and water and a little rotten stone; then dry them by whiping and exposure at the fire. Now, get seme good copal varnish, mix with it some bronze powder, and apply with a brush to the denuded parts. After which set the tea-tray in an oven at a heat of 212° or 300° until the varnish is dry. Two coats will make it equal to new.