A Dictionary of Arts: Sandal or Red Saunders Wood.

A Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines; containing A Clear Exposition of Their Principles and Practice

by Andrew Ure, M. D.;
F. R. S. M. G. S. Lond.: M. Acad. M. S. Philad.; S. PH. DOC. N. GERM. Ranow.; Mulh. Etc. Etc.

Illustrated with nearly fifteen hundred engravings on wood
Eleventh American, From The Last London Edition.
To which is appended, a Supplement of Recent Improvements to The Present Time.

New York: D Appleton & company, 200 Broadway. Philadelphia: George S. Appleton, 148 Chestnut St.
MDCCCXLVII

1847

SANDAL or RED SAUNDERS WOOD (Santal, Fr.; Sandelholz, Germ.), is the wood of the Pterocarpus santalinus, a tree which grows in Ceylon, and on the coast of Coromandel. The old wood is preferred by dyers. Its colouring matter is of a resinous nature; and is, therefore, quite soluble in alcohol, essential oils, and alkaline leys; but sparingly in boiling water, and hardly if at all in cold water. the colouring matter which is obtained by evaporating the alcoholic infusion to dryness, has been called santaline; it is a red resin, which is fusible at 212° F. It may also be obtained by digesting the rasped sandal wood in water of ammonia, and afterwards saturating the ammonia with an acid. The santaline falls, and the supernatant liquor, which is yellow by transmitted, appears blue by reflected light. Its spirituous solution affords a fine purple precipitate with the protochloride of tin, and a violet one with the salts of lead. Santaline is very soluble in acetic acid, and the solution forms permanent stains upon the skin.

Sandal wood is used in India, along with one tenth of sapan wood (the Caesalpinia sapan of Japan, Java, Siam, Celebes, and the Philippine isles), principally for dyeing silk and cotton. Trommsdorf dyed wool, cotton, and linen a carmine hue by dipping them alternately in alkaline solution of the sandal wood, and in an acidulous bath. Bancroft obtained a fast and brilliant reddish-yellow, by preparing wool with an alum and tartar bath, and then passing it through a boiling bath of sandal wood and sumac. Pelletier did not succeed in repeating this experiment. According to Togler, wool, silk, cotton, and linen, mordanted with salt of tin, and dipped in a cold alcoholic tincture of the wood, or the same tincture mixed with 8 parts of boiling water, become of a superb ponceau-red color. With alum, they took a scarlet-red; with sulphate of iron, a deep violet, or brown-red. Unluckily, these dyes do not stand exposure to light well.