Construction of Purl Stitch Machine
Fig. 59 shows a general view of a purl stitch machine built by Dubied & Co. The letter a indicates the carriage, b the handle used to operate the carriage, and c is an auxiliary handle which some knitters like and use, while others take it off, preferring the use of handle b only. The letter i indicates the connection rod for the auxiliary handle; d is the racking handle for racking the back plate, which plate is made to rack over usually about 12 needles. The letter e is a sector of a circle attached to the frame of the machine and acts as a guide and a stop for the racking handle. This may be studied to better advantage in Fig. 60, at e. It has V-shaped notches cut at the proper intervals to correspond to the needle spacing with a V-shaped plunger attached to the handle so that when this plunger springs into one of the notches it brings the needle slots of the back plate into alignment with the needle slots of the front plate.
The secondary handle d-1 is for releasing this plunger to permit the handle to be moved. It will be noted that there are holes in this sector, one back of each notch in the edge, and in two of these holes there are pins. These pins may be placed in any desired hole and act as stops for the racking handle and in this way save the operator the trouble of stopping to count the number of notches every time he racks, as on this class of work racking over anywhere from two to twelve needles at one time is common practice.
Fig. 59.
Dubied Purl Stitch or Links and Links Machine. Hand Power.
To go back to Fig. 59, letter f is a counter for counting the rounds, g indicates two yarn carrier stops, one on each side of the bar or gib, while h and h are the yarn take-up frames and springs. Letter j indicates the two gibs or ways on which the carriage slides, and k is the bar for carrying the yarn carriers.
Now to get an insight into the principle of the method of making this purl stitch we will first give our attention to Fig. 63, which is a line drawing of a needle and the two jacks which are required for each needle in their proper relative positions.