This article was found in The Manufacturer and Builder – February 1870 issue. It looks at how fish hooks were still being produced in the 1870s and near the end of the article it briefly compares to how they were made many years before this. The wire for making fish-hooks isContinue Reading

Many persons clean bottles by putting in some small shot and shaking them around. Water dissolves lead to a certain extent, and a film of this lead attaches itself to the sides of the bottle so closely that the shaking or rinsing with water does not detach it, and itContinue Reading

A contemporary answers this question by stating that they are cut up in small pieces, and these are put for a couple of days in chloride of sulphur, which makes the leather very hard and brittle. After this is effected, the material is washed with water, dried, ground to powder,Continue Reading

Every eating-house visitor of this city and other leading cities of the Union has doubtless noticed a small tumbler of wooden toothpicks upon the counter of the cashier, for the use of customers. These toothpicks are a good feature of the present day. The wooden toothpicks have to a considerableContinue Reading

These marbles were found on the grounds of my 1830's era house. photo property of a Victorian Passage.

The chief place of the manufacture of “marbles,” those little round pieces of stone which contribute so largely to the enjoyment of “Young America,” is at Oberstein, on the Nahe, in Germany, where there are large agate-mills and quarries, the refuse of which is carefully turned to good paying accountContinue Reading

THE frequent use of “oils,” “bear’s grease,” “arctusine,” “pomades,” “lustrals,” “rosemary washes,” and such like, upon the hair, is a practice not to be commended. All of these oils and greasy pomades are manufactured from lard-oil and simple lard. No “bear’s grease” is ever used. If it could be procuredContinue Reading