Easter Egg Dyeing Stand: a Crank-Turned Rubber Roller Spins the Egg Under the Brush (Young, 1943)

"If a dye containing brush is held against the object 8, application of the dye to the object 8 will take place uniformly and in a convenient manner."

Cut a platform of 12 mm plywood about 300 x 180 mm (ours). Near one corner cut an oval opening 70 x 40 mm with a coping saw, his opening 6. Glue a strip of thin plywood or a ring of dowel round it to make the rise 7, so the egg cannot roll off.

Glue short dowels across the top of the platform beside the opening, a little apart, so the gaps between them (his ribs 10 and grooves 11) hold the brushes.

Drill the corners and glue in four dowel legs, his legs 9, long enough to clear the crank below (ours).

Slide rubber tubing over a steel rod for the roll 24 (his roll is rubber, "or any other suitable material"). Bend the rod's long end twice at right angles in the vice to make the crank handle 25.

Cut two bearing brackets from flat bar (ours, his bearings 21 and 22), drill each for the rod at the depth the notebook gives, bend them to hang below the platform and screw them on either side of the opening, so the roll sits under the opening as his Fig. 4. The egg should rest on the roll inside the rise and turn when the crank turns.

Bend a strip of flat bar (his rack bar 14, "preferably strap iron") down and out at each end, drill a row of holes in it to hold the dye bottles, and screw its ends to the back edge of the platform.

Cut a rabbit from plywood with the coping saw, sand it and glue it upright at the far end, his figure 13.

Fill the bottles with food colouring (ours) and put them in the rack. Set a hard-boiled egg in the opening on the roll, turn the crank, and hold a dye-filled brush against the egg: the colour goes on in an even band. Move the brush across to stripe it.

**Raymond P. Young** of Wrightsville, Pennsylvania, US 2,327,754, dated 24 August 1943, filed 27 May 1942. He claimed "dyeing apparatus comprising a platform having an opening therein, a rotatable roller mounted at the underside of the platform and partly protruding into said opening, means for rotating the roller, and an upstanding article confining wall on the platform surrounding said opening". He gives no sizes or dye: the plywood, dowels, all sizes, the bracket bearings, the rubber tube on a rod, and food colouring are ours.