A NEW COMPOSITION FOR COVERING HOUSES AND OTHER BUILDINGS
Year: 1823

page_text: PEW'S SPECIFICATION.
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, I, RICHARD
PEW, of Sherborne, in the County of Dorset, Esquire, send greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George the Fourth, by His
Letters Paten: under the Great Seal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland, bearing date at Westminster, the Seventeenth day of June,
in the fourth year of His reign, did give and grant unto me, the said
Richard Pew, my executors, administrators, and assigns, His especial license,
full power, sole privilege and authority, that I, the said Richard Pew,
my executors, administrators, and assigns, during the term of years therein
expressed, should and lawfully might make, use, exercise, and vend, within
England, Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, my Invention of
"A NEW COMPOSITION FOR COVERING HOUSES AND OTHER BUILDINGS;" in which
said Letters Patent there is contained a proviso obliging me, the said Richard
Pew, under my hand and seal, to cause a particular description of the nature
of my said Invention, and in what manner the same is to be performed, to be
inrolled in His Majesty's High Court of Chancery within two calendar'months
next and immediately after the date of the said in part recited Letters Patent,
as in and by the said Letters Patent, relation being thereunto had, may more
fully and at large appear.
NOW KNOW YE, that I, the said Richard Pew, do by this present Writing,
under my hand and seal, and intended to be inrolled in the said Court of
Chancery, pursuant and in obedience to the condition contained in the said
Letters Patent as aforesaid, certify and declare, that for the purposes of making
said Invention, I select the hardest and purest limestones I can obtain, and
the freest from any contamination or admixture with sand, clay, marl, or other
iny

page_text: impurity of any kind. Statuary marble would be the best, but as that is not
to be obtained in this country I select the nearest approaches to it. These
stones I calcine in a wind furnace until I am satisfied that all the water
and all the fixed air or carbonic acid which they contained are completely
expelled and driven off. Of this pure lime, finely powdered, I take ono part,
to which I add two parts of thoroughly burned clay, also reduced to fine
powder, and mix them well together. In the next place I take one part of
sulphate of lime, moderately calcined, and reduced to fine powder, to which I
also add two parts of the burned and powdered clay before mentioned; I then
mix the two sets of powders together, stirring and working them for a long
while until they are most intimately united, and the composition is then fit for
use, and until used it must be kept from the air and from moisture with great
care. This composition I call smalts or enamel. When burned clay is not
easily procured I sometimes use powdered flints, the fine powder of limestone,
or any other hard material capable of being reduced to powder, but such as
is not soluble in water. When the composition is to be used, I mix it with
about one fourth part of its weight of lime water, or such a quantity as will
bring it to the consistence of a smooth paste, which is to be spread upon the
laths as quickly as can conveniently be done, as it sets rather speedily, and is
then apt to crumble, which must be avoided with all possible care, because it
will lessen, if not destroy, the cohesive principle; and, for the same reason, no
more should be made up at one time than can be used without interruption
during the hours of work in the same day. Should a darker colour be desired,
it may be given to the composition by lamp black, ivory black, the black of
charred bones, charcoal powdered, or the powder of lython thrax, commonly
called stone coal. N.B.-Although this composition was and is principally
intended for the covering of houses and other buildings, as it were, with one
single tile or slate, without joint or seam, which it does very effectually, yet
experience has shown that it is highly useful for many other purposes, for
keeping out wet and the like, since it is proof against rain, hail, snow, and
frost, and gets day by day harder and harder from the time it is laid on until
it becomes as hard as stone, and may be said, humanly speaking, to be ever-
lasting. I declare, therefore, that my Invention is for making a composition
which, when combined with lime water, forms a paste for covering houses and
other buildings.
In witness whereof, I, the said Richard Pew, have hereunto set my
hand and seal, the Thirteenth day of August, in the year of our Lord
One thousand eight hundred and twenty-three.
R. PEW. (L.S.)

page_text: AND BE IT REMEMBERED, that on the Thirteenth day of August,
in the fourth year of the reign of His Majesty King George the Fourth, the
said Richard Pew came before our said Lord the King in His Chancery,
and acknowledged the Instrument aforesaid, and all and every thing therein
5 contained and specified, in form above written. And also the Instrument
aforesaid was stamped according to the tenor of the Statute made in the
fifty-fifth year of the reign of His late Majesty King George the Third.
Inrolled the Fifteenth day of August, in the year of our Lord One
thousand eight hundred and twenty-three.