A treatise on the origin, progress, prevention, and cure of dry rot in timber : $b with remarks on the means of preserving wood from destruction by sea worms, beetles, ants, etc.Britton, Thomas Allen
Science
A treatise on the origin, progress, prevention, and cure of dry rot in timber : $b with remarks on the means of preserving wood from destruction by sea worms, beetles, ants, etc.
Britton, Thomas Allen
Dry-rot; Wood -- Preservation
Herr Temmnick preserved his books from the _anobium_ by dipping them in
a solution of quassia. Except on a small scale, however, the saturation
of furniture seems scarcely practicable. Fumigation seems, however, to be
more available. For small objects, the practice adopted at the Bodleian
Library, Oxford, on Professor Westwood’s recommendation, appears good,
viz. to enclose a number of volumes in a box, shutting quite close, and
placing a small quantity of benzine in a saucer at the bottom of the
case. The same plan might be adopted with small ornamental wood-works,
enclosing them in glass cases shut as nearly air-tight as possible.
The Report of the Commission appointed by the Department of Science
and Art to inquire into the causes of decay in wood carvings, and the
means of preventing and remedying the effects of such decay, which was
published in 1864, states that the action of the worm in wood carvings
may be arrested, and the worm itself destroyed, by vaporization, more
especially by the vapour of benzine; and that, after the worm has been
destroyed, further attacks from it can be prevented by treating the
carved work with a solution of chloride of mercury, either in methylated
spirits of wine, or parchment size, according to the surface character of
the carving or woodwork; the strength of the solution in each case being
60 grains of the chloride of mercury to a pint of fluid, whether spirits
of wine or parchment size. The carving or woodwork should be placed in
a box, made as air-tight as possible, but with means of renewing the
benzine placed in saucers from time to time as it evaporates without
opening the lid of the box. Gilded carved work and panels on which
pictures have been painted, and which have been attacked by the worm, can
only be treated by applying the fumes of the benzine to the back of the
pictures or gilded carved work: there is no reason to suppose that the
vapour of the benzine would influence either the gilding of the one or
the colours of the other.
The process should always be carried out during the spring and early
summer months, according to the state of the temperature and the
observations of those in charge of the carved or other work, as to the
action of the worm, which is manifested by the fine dust falling from the
worm-holes, crevices, &c.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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