Читать книгу One Thousand Ways to Make a Living; or, An Encyclopædia of Plans to Make Money - Harold Morse Dunphy - Страница 57

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Every farmer will buy a good, reliable waterproof harness dressing, and if you know how to make it, you can sell it rapidly.

A young man who had spent most of his life on the farm found himself stranded in the city, and when a friend gave him the recipe for such a dressing, he bought the materials with his last few pennies and began selling it to the farmers. He realized such a good profit from his first sales that he was soon able to make it on a much more extensive scale, and started on a trip through the country, where he sold it to farmers he called upon. Here is the formula:

Petrolatum, 4 pounds; Burgundy pitch, 4 ounces; rosin, 2 ounces; ivory black (dry), 60 ounces; beeswax, 4 ounces.

He melted the rosin, pitch and beeswax together, then added the petrolatum, and when melted, he stirred in the ivory black, stirring it until cold, when he put it up in tin boxes and pasted a printed label on it. This preparation is applied with the fingers or a soft cloth, and rubbed well into the leather, on both sides and edges, after thoroughly washing the leather with softsoap and water, and letting it dry. It imparts a nice black appearance to the leather, but not a high polish, and renders the leather soft and pliable. Used as a shoe dressing, it makes shoes waterproof, so that one does not need rubbers.

To test it, he would, after applying it, soak the leather in water for a few hours, weighing it both before and after soaking, and thus prove that no water had been absorbed.