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Show Dwelling Needs About 45 Gallons of Paint For every brushful of lead-nnd-oil the painter spreads some miner had to dig up a shovelful of lead ore, some farmer had to cultivate several stalks of flax and some one had to tap a pine tree down In the Carolinas. Nature Na-ture has truly been generous in providing pro-viding the necessary Ingredients for paint, Di(t it !s surprising to learn just bow generous she must be in order to furnish the material for painting just one house. Suppose this house were of typical size 12" feet by 3a feet ajtd 30 feet high at the ridge with a sloping shingle shin-gle roof. Assuming that both the inside in-side and outside of the house have been painted, Including walls and ceilings, ceil-ings, the approximate area to be painted paint-ed would be about as follows: Outside Out-side walls, 2,900 square feet; roof, 1,100; inside walls and ceiling, 5,300; total, 9,300 square feet. For the outside and roof about 20 gallons of paint would be required, for the Inside about 25 gallons would be required, making a total of 45 gallons for surface protection and beautifica-tiou. beautifica-tiou. Divided Into its component parts, 45 gallons of paint would take 700 pounds of lead, 15 gallons of linseed lin-seed oil and nine gallons of turpentine. turpen-tine. To secure sufficient metallic lead to make 700 pounds, it Is necessary to mine a small mountain of ore, weighing weigh-ing some 9,000 pounds. Average lead ore as taken direct from the mine contains con-tains less than 6 per cent of pure lead, which amount is further reduced by metallurgical losses which occur during smelting. A half-acre of flax would have to be planted to get the necessary 15 gallons gal-lons of linseed oil. If properly cultivated, culti-vated, a half-acre will yield six bushels bush-els of tlax. Flax is a touchy crop, growing best on land adapted to raising rais-ing wheat. It is called a "ten-year" crop because the land upon which it Is raised is not in condition to grow a second crop before teu years. The needed nine gallons of turpentine turpen-tine represent a whole season's yield of '1Z full-grown pine trees. Of course, (he colors and drier that would be used in painting this mythical house contain lead and oil, but the amount used would not materially change the figures above. When one goes behind the scenes in this manner, the tremendous magnitude mag-nitude of the painting Industry becomes be-comes apparent. The steps necessary to protect with paint a house built of wood are more complicated than those necessary to procure the lumber with which to build It. |