While rooting around in my parents loft, I found load of old notebooks belonging to my grandfather, who worked as a joiner (for those of you who don't know the term, it's kind of a builder/carpenter Jack of all trades job), along with a book called "Workshop Receipts, for the use of Manufacturers, Mechanics, and Scientific Amateurs" by Ernest Spon (a wicked name, I thought) printed in 1879.

The contents include:

Receipts for Mechanical Draughtsmen
Alloys, Casting, and Founding
Bronzes and Bronzing
Cements
Dyeing
Glass-cutting, twisting, drilling, darkening, bending, staining, and painting
Pottery and Porcelain
Glass
Varnishes, Japans, and Polishes
Pigments, and Painting in Oils, in Watercolours, as well as Fresco, House, Transparency, Sign, and Carriage painting
Lathing and Plastering
Paper-hanging
Firework making
Engraving and Etching
Electro-metallurgy, including Cleaning, Dipping, Scratchbrushing, Batteries, Baths, and deposits of every description
Photography
Inks
Silvering
Gilding
Solders
Soap
Candles
Veneering
Marble working
Dyeing, Graining, and Staining Wood

all of this "interspersed with other matters too numerous to mention".

Naturally, I went straight to the fireworks section, which begins with a receipt..I mean...recipe for Nitroglycerine and goes destructively downhill from then on in.

Safety is not, I will note, the primary concern to Mr Spon, considering that in some of the more capricious chemical reactions described (including one for fulminates of Mercury) he urges the experimentalist to "sniff the fumes until no trace of sulphur is detected".

Not that the first trace would kill your sense of smell for the rest of the day...

I'm sure it might be worth something to the right collector, but I intend to keep hold of it, if only for comedy value.

Bo"and if I ever need to know that Double Elephant sized paper measures 40 by 26 inches"urne