Wafers

Wafers, thin discs of dried paste, mostly coloured, used for attaching papers together, and formerly for sealing letters. They are made by mixing fine wheaten flour with water and any non-poisonous colouring materials, so as to form a mixture not thicker than thin cream. A small quantity of this is poured on one of a pair of steel plates, each 15 inches by 10 inches, which form the head ends of a large pair of tongs or pincers, and have their inner surfaces well polished. The act of closing the plates on each other spreads the paste into a thin sheet which, while held between them, is partially baked by turning the blades for a brief time over a fire. The newly-baked sheets are too brittle to form wafers, so that they require to be placed for a little while in a damp cellar to absorb moisture. This dulls the glaze on their surface, but it is restored by pressing them between sheets of tinplate in a screw-press. A dozen sheets of the prepared paste are now piled on each other, and an operator with a hand punch, the size of a single wafer, cuts out twelve or more at a blow, and repeats the operation till the whole of the pile is punched. One person can make a large number of wafers, and the number of workmen now engaged in their manufacture in Great Britain probably does not exceed half a dozen. See also HOST.