Page images
PDF
EPUB

4.

wool be of a good quality, and well dressed. 2. It must be equally spun, carefully observing that the thread of the warp be finer and better twisted than that of the woof. 3. The cloth must be well wrought, and beaten on the loom, so as to be everywhere equally compact. The wool must not be finer at one end of the piece than the rest. 5. The lists must be sufficiently strong, of the same length with the stuff, and must consist of good wool, hair or ostrich feathers; or, what is still better, of Danish dog's hair. 6. The cloth must be free from knots and other imperfections. 7. It must be well scoured with fullers' earth, well fulled with the best white soap, and afterwards washed in clear water. 8. The hair or nap must be well drawn out with the feazel, without being too much opened. 9. It must be shorn close without making it thread-bare. 10. It must be well dried. 11. It must be tenter-stretched to force it to its just dimensions. 12. It must be pressed cold, not hot-pressed, the latter being very injurious to fine woollen cloth.

This manufacture we shall now more particularly consider in its processes. 1. Of preparing the wool, after it has been sorted for the weaver. 2. Of finishing the cloth after it is taken from the loom.

1. Of preparing the wool after it has been sorted. The best wools for the manufacturing of white cloth, intended for dyeing, are those of England and Spain. Spanish wool, as it arrives in this country, has generally some part of the marking pitch still adhering to it in the bale, which must be carefully cut or picked off; and it is frequently so hardly pressed together in the bag, that it requires to be opened out by beating. Until recently it was the practice to beat the wool with rods, in order to shake out the dust and open the staples; but this is now principally done by an opening machine with long coarse teeth, called a devil, or wool-mill, described farther onward. English wool is generally cleaned from pitch marks or other extraneous substances by the wool-sorter, and left by him in a proper condition to commence the process of clothmaking.

In Hampshire, and the west of England, it is now most commonly scoured, by putting it into a furnace containing a liquor composed of three parts of water and one of urine; and after it has been well stirred therein, and the grease it contains dissolved, it is taken out, drained, and washed in running water. In Yorkshire this excellent practice is said to be omitted in regard to wools intended for white cloths; and manufacturers who dye their own wool frequently put it into the dyeing-vat unscoured; a process which, while it enables him to make a greater weight of cloth from his wool, injures the brightness of the colors. It also makes it needful that the oil afterwards used should be increased one-third at least; and gives a general want of cleanliness and comfort to the whole manufacture.

Berthollet states that in this operation, properly conducted, one-fourth of the previous weight of the wool is taken off; and he attributes to the ammonia of the putrefied urine its detergent quality. Vauquelin having analysed

the grease, or yolk, as it sometimes is called, thus discharged, found it to consist of 1. A soap, with a basis of potash, which formed its chief parts.

2. Carbonate of potash, in small quantity.
3. A notable quantity of acetate of potash.
4. Lime.

5. A little muriate of potash.
6. An animal matter, which yields its odor.

He thinks the ammonia contained in the putrefied urine not to be conducive to its action, and advises the use of ordinary soap as better fitted to procure the desired whiteness to wools.

When wool is dyed in the fleece, or without being spun, it is now ready to be committed to the dye-furnace; and this is principally the case when it is to be employed for forming cloths of mixed colors; otherwise it is dyed after being spun. But it is most commonly dyed in the form of cloth.

In the making of superfine cloths, in Hampshire, the wool, after dyeing, is again washed, well dried and beaten with rods on wooden hurdles, to free it from the dye-stuff, which still hangs about it; or this effect is produced by putting it into a wool-mill, formed of a fourflapped vane or fan thinly set with iron spikes, and swiftly revolving within a hollow cylinder of small wooden rods or staves; sufficiently wide apart to suffer the dust to fall through, as the wool becomes separated by the motion of the fans. It is now once more carefully picked, in order to take out the locks which are unevenly dyed, and also the lint, and other filth with which wool in this state abounds. In the manufacture of mixed cloths, wool of the different colors, being weighed out in their requisite proportions, are first shaken well together; they are then further mixed, by being well turned in the woolmill, and, by being afterwards twice passed through the scribbling engine instead of once, they are generally found to be sufficiently intermixed.

The nature of wool, as a species of hair, has been well illustrated by M. Monge in his Observations sur le Mécanisme du Feûtrage, Ann. de Chimie, tom. vi. The surface of all these objects,' he observes, 'is formed of rigid plates, superposed or tiled from the root to the point, permitting progressive movement towards the root, and resisting a similar movement towards the point. This conformation is the main cause of the tendency to felting, which the hairs of all animals in general possess.'

But this conformation, it is clear, must be an obstacle to the spinning of wool, and the fabrication of cloth. Their fibres, therefore, are now coated with oil, which, by filling up the cavities, renders their asperity less perceptible in these operations, just as a film of oil is put upon a smooth file when we wish to render it still smoother. For fine cloths, Gallipoli, or olive oil, is principally used: and rape oil for coarse cloths. In still coarser goods, and where color is not an object, fish-oil is sometimes employed; but if the latter remain in the wool or cloth, it is subject to a fermentation injurious to the cloth, and turns it brown. Combustion has even sometimes been known to take place from

it. Some of the Yorkshire manufacturers make use of a mixture of soap and water with oil, which answers, in moist weather, and, if the wool be immediately carded and spun, very well; but the mixture evaporates, if it remain some time unwashed, or the weather become hot. In oiling, the wool must be sprinkled as evenly as possible. They spread it, for this purpose, on a floor, in Hampshire, beating it in with heavy rods, and use, for superfine cloth, about three pounds of olive oil to twenty pounds of wool. In Yorkshire they reckon six gallons, or a peck, as the proper quantity for fine cloths, and use the wool-mill to assist in its more equal distribution.

This machine consists of a species of cylindrical drum, from three feet, to three feet and a half long, and two and a half to three feet diameter, enclosed with its rollers in a close box or case, in which is a door let down by a hinge. Its circumference being furnished with teeth or spikes, immediately above are five small rollers, furnished with similar teeth: and the machine is made, it is said, to revolve 300 times in a minute. The teeth of the rollers and those of the drum intersect each other, as they all turn round; and the teeth of the five small rollers also intersect each other. The door being opened, or turned down into a horizontal position, about a pound weight of wool is laid upon it at once, and is brought, by its being closed, within reach of the teeth of the cylinder, which take and carry it upwards, so as to work it between the teeth of the cylinder, and those of the five rollers. This opens and separates the matted fibres. Close below, and fitted to the cylinder, is a grating of wooden rods, through which the dust and dirt are carried off. When the door is re-opened, the cylinder throws out the wool in an instant; but sometimes two doors are placed on opposite sides of the machine; one to receive the raw wool, and the other to discharge it when the operation is finished. Coarse goods are passed through this mill; to break the mats of the raw wool and render it light; a second time after it is dyed; a third time, to mix the different sorts together; and lastly, after they are oiled, to spread the effects

as we nave stated.

The scribbler, a kind of rough carding machine, is now resorted to, to break down the longer fibres, and to lay them straight and parallel. It is the same in principle with the carding machine, hereafter described; and, like the above, consists, 1. Of a large cylindrical drum; but covered on the surface with sheets of leather stuck full of projecting wire-teeth, or card-wires, which, as the cylinder is turned, feed themselves with the wool: 2. Of several other smaller cylinders, called workers and clearers, fixed around the great cylinder in pairs. The wool is taken by the teeth of the workers from the great cylinder, and given to the clearers, which return it again to the great cylinder. It is then transferred to another worker, and by its clearer given back again to the great cylinder, and so on. While the teeth of the different cylinders do not actually touch each other, they revolve so near, that the fibres of the wool which the teeth of one card contains are caught by the teeth of the other

card, and drawn out a very few at a time, which renders the wool light and open. 3. When it has passed between three or four pairs of workers and clearers, it is taken up by the doffer, a small cylinder, which turns round very slowly. 4. From it the wool is stripped off by a steel comb, which is placed parallel to its axis, and moved rapidly up and down by a crank. The comb, in ascending, does not touch the doffer; but only as it falls down. The successive portions thus combed off, finally hang together in a thin fleece or web; received in a basket from the machine. Scribbling is repeated twice or three times before the wool is completely disentangled and fit for carding, which, as we have stated, is only an improved operation of the same kind.

C is

But great attention has been bestowed on the carding engine. We shall best illustrate it by the accompanying plate. M, M, M, M is the frame work of the machine which is of wood or cas. iron, the arched part receiving the screws, which support the cylinders or workers and clearers fixed round it. The workers A are larger, and turn slower, than the clearers B; but all work against the cards of the great cylinder, and each is worked upon its clearer. the large cylinder turned by an endless strap applied upon a pulley at one end of its axis. It performs 100 revolutions per minute, and is from thirty to thirty-six inches in diameter. D is a rolbowl, as it is called, or a cylinder of wood, fluted shallow, and moved by a pulley E, connected with another endless strap moving round a second pulley F, on the cogged wheel G. The lower hemisphere of this roller-bowl is circumscribed with a fluted shell, to catch the wool that falls from the doffer on the left of it. I is a cog-wheel receiving notion from the pinion of a pulley I, turned by an endless band moving on the central pully of G. This wheel is connected at top with a pinion fixed on the axis of the large cylinder.

The wool having been scribbled is spread upon the feeding-cloth K, an endless sheet stretched over two rollers, on the axis of one of which moves the wheel II. It is taken off the sheet, between a pair of feeding-rollers about two inches and a half diameter within the frame, and clothed with cards laid on in spiral fillets. They are moved by toothed pinions, on the axis of the cloth-roller, rather quicker than the feeding-cloth, and, in the most complete view of the machine we can give, are concealed by other parts of it. These rollers deliver the wool to the cylinder L, about nine inches in diameter, which works against and communicates it to the great cylinder. It is now conveyed to the five workers, and clearers, embraced by the chair N passing under a wheel fixed in G, shown under the frame work, but this chain only moves the three workers A, which revolve once in about four revolutions of the great cylinder.

The clearers both card the wool on the workers, as well as that on the cylinder, and are moved by the band O passing over a wheel eight inches and a half in diameter fixed on the extremity of each of their axes, and communicating with a wheel twenty-two inches in diameter, fixed on that of the great cylinder. The cylinder turns about

[graphic]

CARDING ENGINE

London Published by Thomas Tog. 73.Cheapside April 1 1827.

« EelmineJätka »