Part 2

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.