Chloroform

Chloroform, CHCl₃, is another powerful solvent of resins. It has a pungent but sweet taste, is not miscible with water, and is very heavy. Commercial chloroform often contains alcohol and other foreign matters, from most of which it may be purified by redistillation from a little oil of vitriol followed by a second distillation from fragments of quicklime. For making varnishes neither water nor alcohol should be present in chloroform, but there are other impurities which do not interfere with its employment for such a purpose.