HAIR PENCILS or BRUSHES for painting. Two sorts are made; those with coarse hair, as that of the swine, the wild boar, the dog, &c., which are attached usually to short wooden rods as handles ; those are commonly called brushes; and hair pencils, properly so called, which are composed of very fine hairs, as of the minever, the marten, the badger, the polecat, &c. These are mounted in a quill when they are small or of moderate size, but when larger titan a quill, they are mounted in white iron-tubes.
The most essential quality of a good pencil is to form a fine point, so that all the hairs without exception may be united when they are moistend by laying them upon the tongue, or drawing them through the lips. When hairs present the form of an elongated cone in a pencil, their point only can be used. The whole difficulty consists after the hairs are cleansed in arranging them together so that all their points may lie in the same horizontal plane. We must wash the tails of the animals whose hairs are to be used, by scouring them in a solution of alum till they be quite free from grease, and then steeping them for 24 hours in lukewarm water. We next squeeze out the water by pressing them strongly from the root to the tip, in order to lay the hairs as smooth as possible. They are to be dried with pressure in linen cloths,. combed in the longitudinal direc tion with a very fine-toothed comb, final ly wrapped up in fine linen, and dried. When perfectly dry, the hairs are seized with pincers, cut across close to the skin, and arranged in separate heaps, accord ing to their respective lengths.
Each of these little heaps is placed se parately, one after the other, in small tin pans with flat bottoms, with the tip of the hair upwards. On striking the bot tom of the pan slightly upon a table, the hairs get arranged parallel to each other, and their delicate points rise more or less according to their lengths. The longer
ones are to be picked out and made into so many parcels, whereby each parcel may be composed of equally long hairs. The perfection of the pencil depends upon this equality ; the tapering point being produced simply by the attenua tion of the tips.
A pinch of one of these parcels is then taken, of it thickness corresponding to the intended size of the pencil ; it is set in a little tin pan, with its tips under most, and is shaken by striking the pan on the table as before. The root end of the hairs being tied by the fisherman's or seaman's knot with a fine thread, it is taken out of the pan, and then hooped with stronger thread or twine ; the knot being drawn very tight by means of two little sticks. The distance from the tips at which these ligatures are placed is of course relative to the nature of the hair, and the desired length of the pencil. The base of the pencil must be trimmed flat with a pair of scissors.
Nothing now remains to be done but to mount the pencils in quill or tin-plate tubes, as above described. The quills are those of swans, geese, ducks, lap wings, pigeons, or larks, according to the size of the pencil. They are steeped during 24 hours in water, to swell and soften them, and to prevent the chance of their splitting when the hair-brush is pressed into them. The brush of hair is introduced by its tips into the larger end of the cut quill, having previously drawn them to a point with the lips, when it is pushed forwards with a wire of the same diameter, till it comes out at the other and narrower end of the quill;