The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Coloring Finishing And Painting Wood

Like other spirit-varnishes, dammar-varnish dries rapidly, because the solvents used evaporate quickly leaving a rather glossy and moderately hard film. Dammarvarnish is used on light or white surfaces at times in place of a fixed-oil varnish, which would usually slightly darken the tone on account of the presence of drying-oils. The film or coat left by applying dammar-varnish is not very durable because the resin becomes weak in cohesion and gradually rubs off. This varnish should be applied quickly—much as shellac is flowed over a surface—because it dries quite rapidly after being spread with a brush.

Dammar-varnish, with its greater transparency as compared with oil-varnishes or even shellac, is used occasionally when it is desired to preserve the natural color of wood or other materials. A few year ago, when burnt-wood designs or decorations in pyrography were popular, dammar-varnish was often used for finishing boxes, plates, waste-baskets, and other small articles of basswood or holly in order to keep the unburned portions of the designs as light in tone as possible. Dammar-varnish has been used rather largely by paint manufacturers to impart a gloss to paints, and is sometimes mixed with zinc white in the preparation of white enamels because it contains no linseed-oil which is apt to turn yellow with long exposure to light.

Dammar-resin is produced by various living pinaceous trees of the genus Dammara, which grow in the East Indies chiefly, and to a minor extent in Australia and New Zealand. The best dammar-resin comes in five grades from the Dutch island of Java, and is known as Batavia from the name of the colony's capital city. Other dammarresins sold on the market are shipped from Padang, Sumatra; Borneo, and Singapore.

Dammar-varnish is made up in varying proportions of resin and solvent, the following being suggestive:

Dammar-gum, Batavia Grade A, government standard, or Singapore dammar-gam, 41/2 to 5 parts. Turpentine, 6 parts.

Transparent Picture-Varnish:

Dammar (pale gum), 12 parts. Camphor gum, 1 part. Turpentine, 25 parts.

A tougher more elastic dammar varnish:

Dammar (Singapore, or Grade A, Batavia), 2 parts (by weight). Sandarac, 1 part. Mastic, 1/5 part. Turpentine, 4 parts.