BRUSH-MAKING. Brushes and brooms may be classified into simple brushes, or such as consist of a single tuft of hairs, be it large or small; and compound brushes, or such as have many tufts. The former may be subdivided into such as are inserted in a handle, or in a tube which serves to connect them with a handle, as the several varieties of hair pencils, mounted in quills, and painters' tools, which are similarly inserted in tubes or flattened cases of tin, or put into the cleft end of a wooden handle, and bound round with twine or thread, smeared over with glue ; and the larger and coarser brushes, in which the end of the handle is inserted and hound up in the midst of the tuft, such as the large paint ing and dusting brushes (technically so called), used by house-painters, and the much larger carpet brooms and besoms or birch-brooms. Stock brushes form an intermediate kind, in which several simple tufts or brushes are separately attached, side by side, to the thin edge of a flat board-like stock or handle : such are used for whitewash and distemper. Compound brushes, consisting of several tufts or knots, inserted in a stock or handle, range under two principal kinds : set-work or pan-work, and drawn work. For both the wooden stock is bored, usually in a lathe, with holes varying in size, depth, and direction, according to the kind of brush. In pan-work, the tufts or knots are formed by gathering together as many bristles or hairs as may be needed, striking one end even, dipping it in melted pitch, binding it round with thread, and, having dipped it again in the pitch, settingit in one of the holes in the stock with a peculiar twisting motion. Common' house-brooms of most kinds, and some dusters, are made in this way. In drawn brushes the boring of the stock is more carefully per formed, and a small hole is carried through from the extremity of each knot-hole to the back of the stock ; and the brushmaker, taking in one hand about half as many bristles as will fill the knot-hole, passes their root ends through the bight or loop of a fine flexible wire which, with the other hand, he has passed double through the hole from the back of the I stock. He then pulls the wire smartly, the effect of which is to draw the tuft into a bight or double, and to force it as far as possible into the knot-hole. After proceeding thus from hole to hole, he cuts the ends of the bristles evenly to the required length with shears. Brushes of this character comprise scrubbing, shoe, clothes, tooth, and nail brushes. In such the stiffness of the root end of the bristles is mostly desirable; while in such as are used for laying on colour, dust. ing, or sweeping, the softness of the flag or taper ends, which are cut as little as possible, is preferable. The stocks of drawn brushes are usually covered at the back with a veneer, which conceals and protects the wires ; but small brushes set in bone or ivory are often drawn with silver wire, which is either left visible or sunk in fine grooves which are sub sequently filled with hard red cement. The
best are trepanned, or have the drawing holes so contrived as to come out, not through the back, but at some uneonspicuous part of the stock, where they may be filled up with small plugs after the drawing, which is done with silk instead of wire. Mr. Hancock has patented a brush in which leather is used in stead of wood or other unyielding material for the stock.
The brush manufacture is chiefly a domestic one, and is well adapted for the employment of females and children. The chief materials employed are bristles, many of which are im ported from Russia and Poland, and are sorted into black, gray, yellow, white, and /nes, the lightest of all ; horse-hair, goat's hair, and other kinds of hair; fibres of whalebone ; a dark coloured vegetable fibre called bass, used for stable and other coarse brooms; and wisk, a light-coloured vegetable substance of much liner quality, used for carpet-brooms, and a very fine variety for velvet-brushes ; woods of various kinds for the stocks and veneers ; and wire, usually of brass, but sometimes of a superior compound, looking much like copper, called red brass wire.
Mr. Cole, a brush-manufacturer, took out a patent in 1842 for numerous improvements iu brush-making. In the general modes of making brushes the bristles are fixed in their places either by some kind of cement or by wire ; but in Mr. Cole's new method the knot of bristles is kept in each hole by the hole being made of a conical shape, with the smaller end of the cone at the face or hair side of the brush: the knot is so shaped that it maintains its place in the brush without either cement or wire. A second improvement consists in steeping in a preservative solution the string with which some brushes are bound round, so as to enable them to be placed in water without loosening. A third consists in a new mode of fastening wedge-shaped handles into various kinds of brushes. A fourth con sists in the manufacture of a new kind of brush for delicate purposes, by making a covering of plush to a foundation Of white flock. A fifth consists in making brushes or pencils of spun glass, by which aquafortis and other corrosive acids can be applied by silver smiths and jewellers with more delicacy and safety than by any of the usual means. A sixth improvement is in the construction of brushes intended for cleansing decanters and bottles. A seventh relates to brushes for cleaning cruets and small phials.
Various patents have been taken out for making flexible backs to brushes.
A recent project, the subject of a patent, is to make brushes and brooms of the branches of the cabbage-palmetto tree, in such a way that the handle shall form one piece with the brush.
In Mr. Cocker's brushes, registered in 1840, the bristles are set diagonally, by which more of them are brought into action at once, and the surface of the brush is firmer.