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Title: The history of a pot of varnish
Author: Anonymous
Release date: November 18, 2025 [eBook #77263]
Language: English
Original publication: Newark: Murphy and Company, 1880
Credits: Charlene Taylor, chenzw and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HISTORY OF A POT OF VARNISH ***
THE HISTORY
OF A
POT OF VARNISH.
FROM SCRIBNER’S MONTHLY.
PUBLISHED BY
MURPHY AND COMPANY,
VARNISH MAKERS.
Copyrighted, 1880, by MURPHY & CO., Newark, N. J., and Cleveland, O.
THE HISTORY OF A POT OF VARNISH.
Together with their love of the practical in the industrial arts,
Americans have a ready faculty of discovering an interest touching
almost on the romantic in the origin and production of what pass
ordinarily for useful and prosaic things. Herein lies a part of the
secret of their great success in mechanical pursuits. This inborn
mechanical curiosity has led many a young American to take apart his
mother’s self-winding tape measure, or the family sewing machine, just
“to see how the thing was made.” We seldom, any of us, lose the desire
to visit machine-shops and factories, and see with our own eyes how the
work of creation, in a limited way, is carried forward, by men who,
from habit, look upon their work as dull routine, while to our fresh
eyes, every deft movement is filled with grace, and each stage in the
transformation of the material into the manufactured object is a new
wonder.
[Illustration: Murphy & Co.’s Varnish Factory, Newark, N. J.]
Everybody knows something about the bright, amber-colored fluid called
varnish, but few persons, probably, know how varied and interesting a
story is wrapped up in this subtle substance, which lends beauty and
durability to almost every product of the workshop and studio. Varnish
factories are comparatively few, and their doors seldom stand wide
open. But there is nothing secretive about varnish. It speaks to the
nostrils of close companionship with turpentine,--the pungent aroma of
which some affect to like, and most persons find very disagreeable.
The linseed oil in the varnish cannot be detected by a novice; and
thousands who are not practical painters, and only use the fluid as
household amateurs, have doubtless wondered what could be the nature of
the illusive material that gives to the varnish its sticky quality and
elastic body. This third ingredient is the resinous juice of a tree. It
is analogous to the little lumps of pitch that boys sometimes find on
a pine board that has been exposed to the sun, and once in their lives
discover to be a very sticky substitute for chewing-gum, which, in
itself, is a kind of resin. Varnish resins are few in number compared
with the vast number of resins of one kind and another. They are not
got from the tree that produced them, but are mined a little below the
surface of the earth, where they have lain and ripened for hundreds,
perhaps thousands, of years. This is true especially of gum copal, the
commercial name of the most valuable of the varnish resins. These three
ingredients, gum copal, linseed oil, and turpentine are brought to the
door of the varnish maker. It is his province to mix them by applying
formulas which are the result of years of experiment and hard-earned
experience.
[Illustration: Murphy & Co.’s Varnish Factory, Cleveland, Ohio.]
Varnish making is one of the new and growing industries of the United
States. This is as it ought to be, for Americans use more artificial
varnish than any other people, and even before they have reached the
point of fully supplying themselves, begin to think seriously of
providing their neighbors and transatlantic friends with a better
article than can be sold abroad for the same money. Fifty years ago
we relied mostly upon England and France for the vast quantities of
varnish employed in the industrial arts of this country. Varnish
manufacture was somewhat understood, but for many years the Americans
were content to make for themselves only the coarse varieties of
the article, while they went abroad for the higher grades needed
to impart luster to their coaches and pianos and to fine furniture.
Finally came the ability and the desire to excel in this industry as in
every other. Varnish materials were at hand. The enterprising traders
of New-York and the once flourishing New England sea-ports, during
their East India and African voyages, were not slow to discover in
gum copal a profitable article for the return cargo, and to-day more
than half of the varnish gums of commerce are brought to this country.
Three large houses have almost a monopoly of the trade. It is further
estimated that about two-thirds of the artificial varnish product of
the world is used in the United States. In the main this is a matter
of national congratulation. It is another proof of the unexampled
growth of American manufactures, of the rapid increase of population
and wealth, and of a wide-spread and active state of refined society.
In no other country can be found so many comfortably furnished houses,
in which the piano and other musical instruments, as well as furniture
of equal adornment and use, are the rule rather than the exception.
In no other part of the world does so large a part of the population
ride in its own carriage; and in the matter of railway cars, those of
America surpass the whole world in number and finish. All of these
mechanical contrivances and articles of use require coats of varnish to
render them attractive to the eye and proof against early decay. But
from another point of view, the aspect of the immense varnish trade
of this country is not so pleasing. It tells of national extravagance
and wastefulness, and of the fragile character of many manufactured
articles. Americans are the greatest carriage and furniture breakers
in the world. They have more furniture, and replace it oftener, than
citizens of the same relative classes in other countries. In Europe,
the breaking of a carriage on account of the horses taking fright is a
very rare occurrence. American horses have extra wildness of spirits,
and runaways and splintered carriages are every-day occurrences.
[Illustration: Surfacer Department Mills.]
I was initiated into the mysteries of varnish manufacture at the
factory of Murphy & Co., located in Newark, New Jersey, a great
industrial city, which owes its growth and prominence to its nearness
to the metropolis, its water and railroad facilities, and its
ability to give cheap and comfortable houses to its working-men. A
thirty-minute ride from New-York, by the Pennsylvania Railway, placed
me at the Chestnut street dépôt in Newark, whence it was a three minute
walk to McWhorter street, where goats and children were taking life
pleasantly together in the September sunshine. Somber brick walls,
surrounding plain brick buildings, succeeded one another along the
street and gave tokens of activity within. I knew that Murphy & Co.
were classed by the trade as one of the great varnish-making firms
in the United States, and reaching No. 238, which appeared to be
the beginning of the end of McWhorter street, the exterior of the
long, rather low brick building made a very modest impression of the
extensive out-buildings, warehouses, workshops and great chimneys which
were concealed behind it. Fine shade trees added grace to the prim
exterior, and the generally unkept street had suddenly assumed an air
of care as well as of prosperity. The factory seemed to consume its own
noise, for the street was very quiet, the stillness being broken only
by a picturesque little colored boy in a peagreen jacket, and with his
trousers rolled up to his knees, who was standing in the middle of the
street, yelling “Pa!” at regular intervals, until a sturdy African put
his head out of a warehouse door and soothed his offspring. Here was a
coincidence: copal gum and the ebony descendant of the copal digger, in
their distant wanderings from Africa, had found a home together at a
varnish factory in Newark, New Jersey.
The office of the Factory, reached by a most unassuming street
entrance, was commodious, elegant, and pervaded by a sense of order and
business activity. The history of the firm is rather remarkable, and
is an excellent illustration of American pluck, enterprise and method
in business matters. From very small beginnings, the firm has attained
its present growth and reputation in a short space of fourteen years. A
solid foundation was laid at the beginning. They realized at the outset
that the only road to success was by the closest personal supervision,
and devotion to the principle that if they took care to attain a
uniform perfection of quality in their products, the profits would
take care of themselves. During the early years of the business, Mr.
Murphy worked constantly over the kettles, and to-day every practical
detail has his personal supervision. Having begun free from the set
ways and prejudices of varnish-makers, he was the better prepared to
discover and adopt improved methods. To-day they have, as a result of
their efforts, a large capital invested in a thoroughly established
business, which, during the past six years, has grown with steady and
extraordinary rapidity.
The extensive works of Murphy & Co., in Newark, are supplemented by
equal manufacturing facilities in Cleveland, Ohio, but the Western
department relies upon the Eastern factory for the highest grades of
varnishes. Several years ago the firm was shrewd enough to see that
the growth of domestic business was to be very largely in the West,
and deemed it wise to establish branches, in 1871, in Chicago and
Cleveland, and become directly identified with the business prosperity
of those sections. Two years’ experience proved that it was better to
consolidate their Western facilities at one point, and the erection of
their extensive works in Cleveland, at Canal and Harrison streets, was
at once begun. During the past six years the business of the Western
department has rapidly increased, and from Cleveland radiates their
entire Western trade.
[Illustration: Gum Sorting Room.]
Before he introduces a visitor to the factory proper, Mr. Murphy
always instructs the candidate for the honor in the first degree of
the subject, in a knowledge of what copal is. For this purpose his
museum of fossil resins affords an excellent means of object study.
To pique the interest of his visitor he first hands him a little
polished cylinder of a hard, yellowish-hued substance, resembling
amber. Some opaque object darkens the otherwise clear and brilliant
cylinder, which is brought between the eye and the light, disclosing
a pale, lemon-colored butterfly in all the delicacy and beauty of its
original creation. Encompassed in the pure, transparent mass, it is
as perfectly posed as if it were in the sunshine of a June morning,
resting its tissue wings and sipping the dew from a clover blossom. It
looks as fresh as a bonnet in a milliner’s window, and as if it came
out of the chrysalis only the day before; yet the butterfly, if we are
to believe the sayings of science, first tried its delicate wings in
some African forest of the tertiary period, how many thousands of years
ago geologists do not venture to say. Happy insect, to have its beauty
thus immortalized! How did the butterfly get within the cylinder?
Probably it was playing listlessly from tropical flower to flower and
tree to tree. It alighted on a limpid, enticing substance which adhered
to the bark of a gigantic tree. This substance proved as fragrant as
a flower and as treacherous as bird-lime. The unwary butterfly found
itself glued to its grave. In a little while the oozing sap covered
its delicate head, the fluttering wings were stayed, and, in less than
an hour, perhaps, the butterfly, in all its splendor, was embalmed for
the ages. Before or during the decay of the tree, the hardened lump of
sap fell on the sands and was buried beneath the mold. In the course of
time the forest almost disappeared through the agency of wind and fire,
or perhaps through slow decay. The lump of gum lay hardening, century
in and century out, beneath the surface of a burning desert, until a
naked negro, in his desultory search, brought it to light and sold it
to the traders as fossil copal, which is solid varnish of the finest
quality.
[Illustration: Oil Boiling.]
Western nations have derived the use of varnish from the Chinese and
Japanese, who, originally, merely applied what nature placed ready-made
to their hand. What would an American painter think of walking
into his grove of varnish-trees, when he wanted a pot of varnish,
and returning in half an hour with a bucketful of the costly fluid,
procured as easily as a Vermont farmer gathers a bucketful of maple
sap in the spring of the year? This is a natural varnish and is called
Lacquer, and everybody nowadays knows the beauty and excellence of the
lacquer-ware of the ingenious Chinese and Japanese. The resin from
the varnish-tree (which belongs to the same family as our poison ivy,
dogwood and sumach, and to the botanical order of _anacar diacea_) is
held in solution, in the right proportion for use, by oils which the
tree simultaneously produces. But the resins of which the artificial
varnish is made were deficient naturally in these solvents, and what
of them they ever contained disappeared as the gum hardened. Varnish
manufacture is the process of restoring these solvents in new and
greater proportions. Many varieties of trees are producing varnish
resins in different parts of the world to-day, but the resin is unfit
for the finer grades of varnish until it has ripened, in the course of
time, and become fossil gum. There are resin-producing trees the gum
of which is not suitable for the body of varnish, yet which produce
one of the principal solvents,--turpentine. Such is the long-leaved
pine of the Southern States. The Japanese and Chinese subject their
natural varnish to a treatment of a simple character, to purify and
increase its drying properties. The black varnish tree of Burmah and
the gum-mastic tree of Morocco are allied to the Chinese and Japanese
species. Efforts have been made to introduce the latter into this
country without practical results. Young varnish-trees have frequently
been brought to America, and specimens of the variety are now growing
in the grounds of the Smithsonian Institute.
[Illustration: Gum Melting.]
Amber, which is found chiefly in the alluvial deposits bordering
the Black Sea, is the most valuable of the fossil resins. Its extra
hardness is supposed to be the result of age, far ante-dating that of
fossil copal. It used to be employed in varnish manufacture, but is now
too rare and costly. Fossil copal is said to have been first found in
the blue clay about Highgate, near London, but the most famous fields
are the narrow strips of barren sea-coast on the eastern shores of
Africa, opposite the island of Zanzibar.
[Illustration: Japan Boiling.]
In 1850, before the steamship and the submarine telegraph
revolutionized the commercial methods of the world, the port of
Zanzibar, the Sultan’s capital, located on the western side of the
island, opposite the main coast, was then, as it is now, the chief
outlet for the products of the east coast and the interior of Africa.
Arabs and Hindoos formed the merchant and trading classes. Trading
with the interior was carried on by means of caravans, which would be
absent from Zanzibar sometimes five, eight, or even ten years. Traders
and agents of the merchants traveled continually to and from the coast,
where they traded with the native copal diggers and with such natives
as occasionally brought a single ivory tusk to market. Copal barter was
comparatively easy, but ivory barter was characteristically complex.
Laying his ivory tusk on a box, the native owner would sit astride one
end of the tusk and watch the covetous and expostulating trader pile
up beads, cloth, and articles of barter on the other end, while the
equally loquacious native would cling to his tusk, and firmly maintain
that they had not yet found the equilibrium of trade.
[Illustration: Thinning Down and Emptying.]
The copal diggers are an improvident class, as natives of the tropics
always are. They dig for copal when dire necessity drives them to it,
and seldom appear before the trader with more than a double-handful of
gum to sell. On the eastern coast the diggers do not go much above the
second parallel, or below the twelfth. In searching for a pocket of
the gum they puncture the sandy surface to a depth of one or two feet
with a short, small spear resembling the Zulu assegai. They sometimes
dig a trench eight or ten feet deep if the find is sufficient to
inspire them to make the necessary exertion. For the last twenty-five
years, Europeans living at Zanzibar have talked of visiting the copal
fields, and making an organized search for the gum. The undertaking
would prove profitable but for the almost perfect certainty that the
whites of the expedition would quickly succumb to the climate, and
the Arabs and negroes cannot be prevailed upon to make a systematic
effort. When India-rubber became a valuable article of commerce, the
supply of copal from Zanzibar appreciably diminished, not because the
fields are anywhere near exhausted, but because the indolent natives
find it easier to gather India-rubber than to dig for gum copal. The
superiority of Zanzibar copal to other varnish resins is apparent to a
novice, for it is the hardest and clearest, and comes in thin, small
flakes, a piece the size of a man’s hand being an uncommonly large
lump. After being cleaned of its coating of dirt by immersion in strong
lye, the surface of the copal is found to be uniformly covered with
little round dots about the size of a pin’s head. This appearance is
called “goose skin,” and its cause is a matter of doubt and curiosity
among scientific men. The most probable explanation is that the goose
skin appearance is due to molecular action. It cannot be the imprint of
the sand on the gum when it was soft, because in that case the surface
would be pitted, instead of granulated. Copal trees are producing gum
in Zanzibar to-day. The new product is comparatively soft, and of
inferior value for varnish. The Sultan formerly claimed one-eighth of
all the articles of commerce passing through the Zanzibar custom-house,
the perquisites of which were farmed out to lesser officials.
[Illustration: Cooper Shop.]
As the demand for varnish gums increased, new fields were discovered.
Accra, or “North Coast,” fossil resin is an excellent gum, and is
found in Guinea and on the west shores of Africa, in about the same
zone as Zanzibar. Some of the gum is very pale and clear in color. It
is found in larger lumps than the East Coast gum, and is not so hard,
nor has it the “goose skin” surface. For several years the greater
part of the fossil resin of commerce has been obtained in the northern
island of New Zealand. It is called Kauri gum, and is not found below
the thirty-eighth parallel. This variety of resin is gathered by both
whites and natives. It is of all degrees of age, hardness, and value,
the better grades of kauri being found near the decayed stumps of
trees, that have long since perished. The trees now bearing grow to a
great height, and some of them are four and five feet in diameter at
the base. The resinous juice exudes between the body of the tree and
the bark, and runs down into the ground at the roots. The wood of the
kauri-tree is much harder than Norway pine, and in color resembles
mahogany, with which it cannot be compared in fiber or grain. It is a
lumber-tree and the boxes in which the gum is shipped (usually about
200 lbs. to the box) are made of the lumber of the tree. Kauri gum
varies in the size of the lumps, from a few ounces to seventy-five, and
even one hundred pounds. A fossil resin of much value has been found in
the Island of Madagascar. Benguela, Congo, and pebble gums (pebble gum
is found in river-beds, worn to shapes resembling pebble stones) are
found on the west coast of Africa. The Benguela gum formerly came into
Europe through Lisbon. The Manilla, Macassar, and Dammar gums found in
the Philippine Islands, are used for common grades of varnish. Resins
suitable for varnish manufacture are also found in South America and
Mexico. The product of the former country is commonly called animé,
while the Zanzibar copal passes in the London market under the name of
animi.
These two varieties most commonly contain insects, a fact which
suggested their allied nomenclature. The Murphy museum holds many
interesting specimens of insect copal. Ants feed upon the bark of
the copal-tree, and, it is believed, frequently destroy its life.
But the copal-tree has its revenge. For when the tree is wounded the
resinous juice exudes and entraps the tiny enemy. Lumps of gum are
frequently found as full of ants as a plum pudding is of fruit. Mr.
Murphy has a fine specimen of accra gum which is the crystal tomb
of a fly. One piece of Zanzibar shows a perfect grasshopper, which
looks as if it had just hopped off a Western pasture. Another piece
preserves a beautiful bumble-bee, in rich and velvety apparel. What a
dreary existence he must have led in an age long, perhaps, before there
were boys to sting! A third piece proves that the mosquito is a very
venerable citizen of this earth. One of the workmen has a small piece
of gum which is a witness to the predatory character of the spider.
One afternoon an unlucky fly alighted on the bark of a copal-tree, and
felt its feet involved in the sticky gum, past extrication. A spider
traveled that way, and seeing the fly apparently too much engaged in
sipping some sweet to heed his approach, pounced upon his prey, only
to be caught as was the fly, and to be incarcerated in the gum with
his booty in his fangs. Small lizards have been found in gum copal.
Insects cannot be seen in the gum before it is cleaned. All varnish
gums used to be shipped in the natural state, but to escape paying the
American custom duties of ten cents, on a quarter of the weight, which
is lost in cleaning, the gum is cleaned and purified superficially
before shipment. The duty has been abrogated, but, nevertheless, it is
found best to clean the gum before it is put in cargo. The boys that
do the cleaning in Zanzibar appropriate the most curious specimens
for themselves, and, for this reason, of late years, insect copal has
become more rare.
[Illustration: A Bit of Laboratory.]
Gum copal and the other varnish resins reach the factory of Murphy &
Co. in the original packages. In a long, low room adjoining the storage
warehouse, boys sit at a long table, placed against the wall, and give
the gum a second cleaning, after which it is assorted and broken into
small lumps for the melting-kettles, and stored in large bins in an
adjoining room. In the cleaning, or chiseling process, the boys use a
long narrow hatchet which has a blade at one end and a hammer-head at
the other, and is grasped by the head and socket, and handled like a
short chisel, for convenience in working around the irregular surface
of the kauri-lumps. In breaking the lumps the hatchet is used like a
hammer. The clippings, or chips, and the gum dust are saved, and form
the body of a cheap varnish.
With the cleaning and the sorting begin the niceties of the business.
Murphy & Co. owe much of their success--as every other manufacturing
company that wins a permanent success must--to faithful attention to
the smallest details. The gums are graded with considerable care before
they are put up in commercial packages. This firm re-assorts the gum,
making a number of additional grades, according to kind, clearness or
purity, and hardness, and keeps the different lots separate throughout
the process of manufacture, to which fact may be ascribed the
homogeneity and unvarying quality of their products of each particular
grade. The gum-room is in the remotest angle of the factory grounds,
and there the gum is made ready for the melting-room and furnaces
adjoining.
Two other ingredients have to be in store before the manufacturer can
proceed with his work. Of these, turpentine needs no special treatment.
It arrives at the factory in barrels, and is stored in four massive
iron tanks, which together hold about ten thousand gallons.
The oil-shop, where the oil is boiled and otherwise prepared, is a
small, but massively built, structure, located in the center of the
works, and contains two wrought iron kettles substantially set in
masonry, each of which has a capacity for boiling five hundred gallons
of oil. Experiments with the oil are made in the laboratory, and
the ideas there developed are carried out in a practical way in the
oil-shop. This department is in charge of Mr. Murphy’s younger brother,
who brings to his work a natural liking for its duties, strengthened by
a special technical education at the Columbia College School of Mines.
On the successful preparation of the oil, depend, in a great measure,
the drying properties, elasticity, toughness, and clearness of the
varnish; and the difficulties of a uniform treatment are very much
increased by the want of uniformity in the raw oil. This does not arise
from adulteration of the oil, but from the different characteristics of
different lots of seed. The manufacture of linseed-oil consists simply
in crushing the seed and expressing the oil by hydraulic pressure, but
to secure the finest quality of oil, the linseed must be grown under
favorable conditions, and harvested only after it is fully matured.
If the season should be unfavorable, or if the crop is cut before
it has fully ripened, or if a lot contains an undue percentage of
foreign seed, the resulting oil is not suitable for the finest grades
of varnishes. Each parcel of raw oil, therefore, is carefully tested
by Murphy & Co., and only such accepted as meet the tests which their
experience shows them are necessary to furnish satisfactory results
in their work. As the oil is received in the factory it is pumped
into large tanks in the second story of the main warehouse, which
communicates by pipes with the large boiling-pots in the oil-shop.
After treatment there, it is allowed to run out of the kettle into a
large iron vat, and from that is pumped back into the main storehouse,
into tanks of five hundred gallons each, and which, therefore, hold
a single boiling. From one to six months is given it to settle and
brighten. The foreign matter settles to the bottom of the pot, while
the oil on top, which has become as clear as amber, is drawn off as
it is required for mixing with melted gum. A dozen or more different
kinds of prepared oils are kept in store, which vary in the quantity
and the kind of the dryer boiled with them, according to the results
sought for in the completed varnish. Thus the success or the failure
of varnish-making must depend greatly on the care and fidelity of the
foreman of the shop.
A double system of pipes, connecting with the boiled oil and turpentine
storage tanks, traverse the yard and enter all the out-buildings,
where their ingredients are required for mixing with the melted gum.
Nothing could exceed the neatness of the storage-room. The tanks are
painted on the outside, and kept perfectly clean. There is a purpose in
this. Good varnish cannot be produced if the workmen fall into careless
and slovenly habits. To make cleanliness a habit, and, therefore, a
matter of no special mental effort, the utmost neatness is maintained
from the gum-room to the business office, and even in the factory yard.
With the three ingredients at hand, the making of the varnish begins.
It is desired to make a varnish of a certain quality. The foreman of
the melting-room goes to the gum-room with his large copper kettle,
holding 125 gallons, which is set on four small iron wheels. He takes
from one of the many bins 100 or 150 pounds of the requisite kind of
gum, returns with it to the melting-room, covers the kettle with a
sheet-iron cover, which is provided with an exit for the thick and
noxious fumes of boiling gum, and pushes the kettle into one of the
great fire-places, which has almost the draft of a furnace. The fire
directly underneath the kettles is very hot, and necessarily so, for
the hardest kinds of gum will liquefy only after being subjected to a
very high heat.
When the batch of gum is thoroughly melted the kettle is drawn from
the fire, and a certain quantity of the prepared oil is poured in. The
percentage of oil to gum varies greatly, according to the character
of the varnish which is sought to be produced. After being thoroughly
stirred, the mixture is pushed into the fire-place again and is
boiled to a certain point, after which it is then drawn from the fire
and the temperature of the mixture allowed to fall to about 300°.
In the meantime the requisite amount of turpentine has been allowed
to run into an upright receiver, with tube register attached. The
kettle is drawn under the stop-cock, the turpentine mingles with the
mixture of oil and gum, and the varnish is practically made. It is
next strained through coarse muslin and filtered, after which it is
brought into contact with another system of pipes, and is pumped into
one of the three or four store-rooms, where large tanks, resting on
stone platforms, preserve the varnish while it settles and ripens. The
temperature of the varnish store-room is kept at 70° Fahrenheit during
the winter.
In the finer grades of varnish, the ripening process requires from
four to twelve months, and in many instances a much longer time is
necessary to bring out its best qualities. This is not a matter of
hap-hazard judgment on the part of the varnish maker. Every tank of
varnish, during the time of ripening, is subjected to frequent tests
by a practical carriage painter. It is tried on the same surfaces and
under the same circumstances as it will be after it goes into the
hands of the customer. The varnish must meet every test satisfactorily
before it is allowed to go out of the factory. It is a very whimsical
substance, and at times the best varnish is so unaccountably obstinate,
that painters are agreed that it is in some manner allied to the
evil spirit. What are called the “deviltries” of varnish come under
fifty or more terms of opprobrium familiar to the paint-house, and
may be divided into a dozen or more species; there is the “specky”
family of deviltries, the “crawling” species, the “sweating” variety,
the “blotching” class, the “peeling” genus, the “cracking” family,
the “blistering” order, and other analogous misdemeanors that drag
painters by a string of profanity into the hands of Satan. When varnish
suddenly departs from its usual good conduct, and begins its pranks,
just as the painter is in a hurry to finish an important job, the
painter is none too slow to lay the responsibility for his trouble on
the varnish-maker, or somebody whose exact accountability he forgets
in his rage, and is human enough not to see that he himself may be to
blame. The “deviltries” of the business are as annoying to the varnish
maker as the painter. If the varnish came from a first-class factory,
the chances are as eight to ten that, if it is put to the purpose for
which it was made and then behaves ill, the fault lay more with the
painter, and with the conditions under which it was used, than with
the material itself. Varnish loses its bad temper as a rule, in a dry,
warm, well-ventilated paint-shop, which of course ought to be clean and
free from dust. Varnish despises an ignorant painter as much as a horse
does an ignorant driver. Varnish-makers have to bear the short-comings
of ignorance with resignation and meekness. When a barrel of varnish
is returned with the indorsement, that “it contains a devil,” the
varnish-maker mutters: “Another stupid painter.” But like the father of
the naughtiest boy in the neighborhood, he knows the character of the
pesky thing too well, to assert that it was not as devilish as reported.
The precautions taken by Murphy & Co. to assure themselves that
their varnishes will behave well, if properly treated, have assisted
greatly in securing for their varnishes a reputation for “perfection
of quality.” Not only is the varnish strained and filtered before it
goes into the ripening tanks, but also again before it goes into the
barrel for shipment. They have introduced an improvement into the
filtering machine by which the ordinarily tedious process is urged
forward with ten-fold rapidity. The neat cans with the handsome labels,
and the barrels in which the varnish is shipped, are both made by
the firm, a large building in the rear of the melting-room being set
aside for that purpose. The ground floor is a cooper-shop, and the
second floor a tin-shop, both departments being supplied with the most
improved appliances, and the best material and skill. A large room
has been reserved in the new warehouse, just completed, to be used
for painting the barrels, which is an indication of the care paid by
the firm to minor details. On the second floor of the same building,
in the gable-end, has been constructed a room, which is supposed to
be as fire-proof as iron and brick and stone and mortar can make an
apartment. This is the new laboratory. The firm believe that it will
be in the future, as it has been in the past, the most profitable room
in the establishment. A unique branch of the establishment is the
“Publication Office,” which occupies two large, cheery rooms in the
basement. Two practical printers are in charge, and have at hand a
full stock of job printing material and two modern presses. The neat
typographical dress of the Company’s catalogues and price lists speak
well of the practical success of this curious appendage to a varnish
factory. A miniature newspaper, called “The Copal Bug,” is occasionally
issued.
Murphy & Co. have made an important departure from the old methods of
varnish manufacturing by establishing a factory for the manufacture
of surfacers for coach and car work, as an auxiliary to their varnish
business proper. This factory is several blocks removed from the
main establishment, the two being connected by telephone. Since the
“deviltries” of varnish, above described, are very frequently due to
the improper preparation of the painted surface to which the varnish
is to be applied, the firm believe that, by making surfacers already
prepared for application and the best calculated for producing a
suitable surface for varnishing, they would not only save themselves
and the too frequently innocent varnish the anathemas of careless
painters, but confer a blessing on the painter as well. These prepared
paints have been named “A. B. C. Surfacers,” and very appropriately,
too, for the priming, leveling, and smoothing coats on which the
varnish rests are the first steps toward the completed task of the
painter, and if the first steps are badly taken, the best varnish in
the world will not save the job.
Six or seven years ago American varnish-makers were vainly striving to
compete in their own market with the highest grades of English coach
and railway varnish. Murphy & Co. have led the way to a solution of
this highly important problem for this country, and now produce a
varnish which has the entire confidence of many of the first carriage
builders and railway companies of the United States, and by some is
regarded superior to English varnishes. In a very few shops the English
article still maintains a show of supremacy, by virtue of the survival
of the old-time prejudice against American goods. The best American
varnishes are now making their way in the markets of Europe, and in
this industry, as in so many other important branches of manufacture,
America has cast off the yoke of dependence on the Old World.
Murphy & Company will be glad to send to any address, upon application,
descriptive lists of their Varnishes, containing detailed information
of each grade, with prices attached.
[Illustration: Shipping Room.]
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
Typo corrected on page 4: “an” to “and”.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been left unchanged.
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