Encyclopedia of Practical Receipts and Processes

How to silver a mirror, brew ginger beer, kill moths, make fireworks, tan a hide, bronze iron, cure a ham and clean a straw hat: William B. Dick's numbered encyclopedia answered the questions a nineteenth-century household actually had.

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To Analyze Soap

thoroughly boiled, and are very sharp. It is
thoroughly boiled, and are very sharp. It is

Take a small portion of the soap, place it in a suitable vessel (a beaker glass), add ether to it, and next acetic acid in a somewhat smaller quantity. The liquid will separate, after a while, into two distinct layers, the upper of which contains in solution the fatty actds, while the lower layer contains the alkalies and salts, and such substances as might happen to be insoluble in the two fluids just named. By means of a pipette, the fluids are separated from each other. The ethereal solution is poured into a previously weighed beaker glass, and the ether evaporated upon a water bath, and next again weighed with the fatty acids it contains. The aqueous acetic acid is evaporated to dryness, and the quantity of alkali determined according to well-known methods. (See No. 586).

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