IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF PENCILS OR CRAYONS
Year: 1855

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Stephen White at the Office of
the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 31st January
1855.
I; STEPHEN WHITE, of Southport, in the County of Lancaster, Gentleman,
do hereby declare the nature of my said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN THE
MANUFACTURE OF PENCILS OR CRAYONS" to be as follows:---
This Invention consists in preparing and compounding certain particular
ingredients to be used so as to form pencils or crayons, for the purpose of
writing, drawing, or delineating lines, figures, or other similar impressions
on paper, &c., which when so written or delineated shall form a permanent
impression not to be erased by caotchouc, or any other such like known
means, constituting in itself a series of indelible pencil inks of various shades
or colors, in the nature of what is commonly called pencils or crayons. The
method of manufacture, and the manner in which the same is to be per-
formed, are particularly described and ascertained in manner following, that is
to say:―
In the first place, the cement for the paste is prepared by taking two parts
of the purest white olive oil soap, and one part of the purest picked gum
arabic, which are to be digested together with twenty-one parts of distilled
water, to be kept at a temperature of about 120 degrees Fahrenheit, in a
suitable covered vessel, with frequent stirring for some hours until perfectly

page_text: dissolved; it is then to be strained through linen or fine muslin cloth whilst
still warm, so as to remove any impurities which may be found. The various
colored pencils or crayons I propose principally to manufacture are black,
blue, green, and red, or scarlet, which are prepared according to various
suitable formula, and which will be fully detailed in my Complete Specification
hereafter. The materials or ingredients which are used to impart the color
may be ground on a porphyry slab as fine as possible; then conveyed to the
mixing table, the whole upper part of which may be made of ground plate
glass of about four feet six inches square, and the glass should be imbedded
on a layer of dry sand, at least two inches thick, supported beneath by a plate
of wrought iron one-eighth of an inch thick, corresponding to the size of the
glass; the wrought-iron plate should be supported by cross bars' one inch.
square, and placed longitudinally three inches apart, which bars should be
secured to a side frame of iron, supported by legs of about three and a half
feet high: The iron plate, sand; and glass'should be heated 'from beneath by
means of a series of steam" or hot air' tubes, or 'ä' series of small "gas¹ tubes,
with small single jets regularly distributed beneath the iron plate, so as to
keep an extended and uniform temperature. The before-mentioned materials
'should be thoroughly well ground and incorporated together on the heated
glass plate table, which should be maintained at a temperature of -110-degrees
Fahrenheit, until the whole mass assumes a homogenous paste of the con-
sistence of common dough. The paste so prepared may then be moulded
through an ordinary screw moulding machine, such as is used generally for
moulding crayons of the ordinary kind, which instrument is so well known' to
pencil manufacturers as to require no description here. The pencils or crayons
as formed in their soft state, on coming from the moulding machine, 'should
be placed on a metallic plate of lead, pewter, or brass, having a series of half-
round grooves cut-lengthways, corresponding to the size of the pencil or
crayon, and covered with another exactly corresponding counterpart, screwed
together by clamp screws each side. The plates with the pencils or crayons
should be placed in a room regularly heated, and the atmosphere maintained at
an uniform temperature of about 70 degrees Fahrenheit, for a period of four
weeks at least to dry; when so dryed, the crayons or pencils may be placed in
cedar wood cases, or used tubular in the ordinary metallic pencil cases.