CARDS, PLAYING. The manufacture of playing cards involves several processes of much nicety. The preparation of the material, the cutting into quadrangular pieces, and the stamping with the coloured device, all require careful operations. The card-board is made by many successive processes of pasting and pressing. In Mr. Dickinson's patented method, damp paper is wound over certain rollers ; a paste trough with circular brushes are placed near the rollers ; and during the transfer of the paper from one set of rollers to another, these circular brushes coat the surfaces of two or more papers with paste. Roller-pressure completes the operation.
Several patents have been taken out for cutting the pasteboard into strips, preparatory to a further cutting into card-pieces ; of these patents, one by Mr. Dickinson will illustrate the principle generally. The machine con sists of a pair of rollers, each roller having a number of circular revolving cutters ; the pasteboard is passed between the rollers, where the cutters act upon it in the manner of shears, and cut it into strips, which strips are afterwards cut into card pieces.
The printing and colouring of the cards have exercised much ingenuity. In the ordi nary mode of manufacture, the device is partly produced by copperplate printing and partly by stencilling in water-colours. Mr. De In
Rue has patented a method of using oil colours, and of printing in a mode very simi lar to that of calico-printing. The pips (hearts, spades, &c.) are set up by blocks or types, and printed at a press—the black with lamp-black ground in oil, and the red with vermilion ground in oil. The 'court cards ' are printed by a series of impressions in dif ferent colours, almost precisely in the same way as that described under noon CLOTH MANUFACTURE. Mr. De la Rue also employs the system of lithography, in which case there must be as many stones as there are colours, each having one particular part of the device.
The same ingenious inventor has contrived a mode of introducing gold or silver among the colours of the device. In this case all the portions of surface which are to be thus adorned are printed with gold-size instead of ink; and while this gold-size is yet moist, gold or silver-powder is sprinkled over the card: it adheres to the moistened parts, and may be lightly brushed from other places ; and when all is dry, the gold will bear a careful polishing.
Some playing cards have a surface of such exquisite whiteness and smoothness as to re semble ivory; this is produced by coating them with a composition of fine French white, drying-oil, and size.