Abstract
THE purpose of this book is "to inform the technician on nature and properties of paints and varnishes". Such a limited aim the work fairly well achieves.Thus there are chapters on resins, oils, pigments, paint testing and the like, where the information, if not novel in tenor or presentation, is of the kind likely to be useful to the paint techno logist. However, some unfortunate statements have found their way into the text. Thus, to condemn fillers as solely useful for cheapening a paint, and as finding no place in a first-quality product (p. 70), is unnecessarily exclusive. It is a great pity that nothing better to illustrate the text could be found, assuming that illustrations are necessary, than a handful of ill-executed and uninformative line- drawings. The title is most misleading. It is true that a section will be found devoted to the theoretical concepts of physical chemistry, and throughout the text are scattered discussions on such matters as the mechanism of oil oxidation, structural formulae of complex molecules, etc. ; but these disquisitions are marred by a diffuseness and a lack of precision that render them more confusing than enlightening. Reference may be made, in illustration, to the inadequate treatment of viscosity and "rigidity"[sic] (p. 16), by which is meant anomalous viscosity, and of the classification of drying, semi- and non- drying oils (p. 45). Such imprecision, it must be admitted, is inescapable in a work almost purely descriptive ; even the section on paint-testing is almost wholly uncritical. The absence of an index must seriously limit the value of this book as a work of reference.
Notions fondamentales sur les vernis et peinture
Par Louis Kientz. Pp. xxi+234. (Paris: Gauthier-Villars, 1947.) 475 francs.
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Notions fondamentales sur les vernis et peinture. Nature 163, 306 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/163306c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/163306c0