The following are Captain Huddart’s improved principles of the rope manufacture:—
1. To keep the yarns separate from each other, and to draw them from bobbins revolving upon skewers, so as to maintain the twist while the strand or primary cord is forming.
2. To pass them through a register, which divides them by circular shells of holes; the number in each concave shell being conformable to the distance from the centre of the strand, and the angle which the yarns make with a line parallel to it, and which gives them a proper position to enter.
3. To employ a tube for compressing the strand, and preserving the cylindrical figure of its surface.
4. To use a gauge for determining the angle which the yarns in the outside shell make with a line parallel to the centre of the strand, when registering; because according to the angle made by the yarns in this shell, the relative lengths of all the yarns in the strand will be determined.
5. To harden up the strand, and thereby increase the angle in the outside shell; which compensates for the stretching of the yarns, and the compression of the strands.
A great many patents have been obtained, and worked with various degrees of success, for making ropes. Messrs. Cartwright, Fothergill, Curr, Chapman, Balfour, and Huddart, have been the most conspicuous inventors in this country; but the limits of this work preclude us doing justice to their respective merits.
All improvements in the manufacture of cordage at present in use, either in her Majesty’s yards or in private rope-grounds, owe their superiority over the old method of making cordage to Captain Huddart’s invention of the register plate and tube.
Mr. Balfour took out a patent for the manufacture of cordage about a month before Captain Huddart; but the formation of his strand was to be accomplished by what he called a top minor, (in the form of a common top, with pins to divide the yarns,) which upon trial could not make cordage so good as by the common mode. On seeing Captain Huddart’s specification, Mr. Balfour, five years after, procured another patent, in which he included a plate and tube, but which was not sufficiently correct, and experience in the navy proved the insufficiency of the cordage. Captain Huddart’s plate and tube were then adopted in the king’s yards, and he gave his assistance for the purpose.
Captain Huddart then invented and took a patent for a machine, which by registering the strand at a short length from the tube, and winding it up as made, preserved an uniformity of twist, or angle of formation, from end to end of the rope, which cannot be accomplished by the method of forming the strands down the ground, where the twist is communicated from one end to the other of an elastic body upwards of 300 yards in length. This registering-machine was constructed with such correctness, that when some were afterwards required, no alteration could be made with advantage by the most skilful and scientific mechanic of that day, Mr. Rennie. Thus the cold register was carried to the greatest perfection.