Dressing Machine or Bolter. Jack.
The dressing machine consists of a hollow cylinder, or frame, covered with wire cloth of different degrees of fineness, the finest being at the elevated, or upper end of the cylinder, which is inclined in the same way as the bolting mill. Within the cylinder, which may be made of pieces of wood rendered circular, and, like the ribs of an animal, placed at certain distances from each other, a reel is placed with its axle in the centre of the cylinder, which is fixed, or stationary. To the rails of this reel are attached hair brushes, which, when made to revolve, or turn round, brush against the interior cloth wire surface of the cylinder. The machine is provided with a shoe or jigger, very similar to that of the millstones, to cause a regular supply of flour or meal in the same state in which it came from the millstones through a spout from the floor above, to which it is elevated by the sack tackle, or elevator, after being ground. The meal by this means being gradually let, or fed into the cylinder, is, by the motion of the brushes of the reel, sifted or rubbed through the cloth wire with which the cylinder is covered. The finest of the flour will go through the upper end, where the finest wire cloth is placed; the next finest through the next division of the wire cloth, which is coarser, the middlings through the following division, the pollard, or sharps, through the last, and the bran, not being able to get through the wire cloth at all, on account of its coarseness, is thrown out at the end of the cylinder. The cylinder is enclosed in a large and close box, to prevent the waste of flour by its going off in dust. This box is divided into several compartments, or partitions, by means of moveable boards. Some millers have more partitions than others, and indeed they all vary the number to suit the nature or sort of flour which they are manufacturing. In a dressing machine of three divisions, the flour deposited in the first is called household, or seconds, that in the second middlings, and in the third pollard, which is not flour, but a fine description of bran.
Revolving Screen. Jacob’s Ladder.
When wheat arrives at a mill to be ground the sacks are received in the lower part of the mill, and hoisted by means of the sack tackle to the upper storeys, generally the uppermost. The mode of this operation is as follows, and it is performed with little bodily labour. The rope or chain of the sack tackle is firmly fastened round the mouth of the sack by the man below, who by means of a rope attached to a lever throws the tackle into gear. The sack then immediately ascends, without any further aid from the man, through the different trap doors, till it has arrived at the place of its destination. There another man is ready to receive it, who, as soon as he has landed it by pulling it on one side, throws the tackle out of gear, and returns the rope or chain to the man below. The wheat is then shot into a garner or bin, and thus the same process goes on till the whole load or cargo is safely deposited in the bin or garner. The wheat remains there till it is wanted to be ground, when, by means of a spout, it is conveyed to the hoppers below, and from thence runs in between the stones. In its progress to the stones, it may, or may not, be subjected to a cleansing process. The wheat being reduced to a flour, escapes through an aperture of the floor into a spout, by which it is conveyed to the trough. It is then either put into sacks, and drawn up again into one of the higher storeys, and deposited in bins over the dressing machines, or this is effected by a machine called an elevator, which performs the operation without the assistance of manual labour. In this bin the flour should be left till, at any rate, it is perfectly cold, but is will be all the better if it remain for three or four weeks, provided it be occasionally turned. From this bin it is passed, by means of a spout, to the hopper of the bolting mill or dressing machine, by which it is separated from the bran or pollard, and is then fit for use.
Smutter. Scoop. Claw.
The screening machine consists of a roller-shaped sieve, so divided, that the corn which is placed at one end passes over a large surface of wire as the sieve revolves, and this operation removes from it external impurities, such as sand and dirt. When it arrives at the end of the screw the wheat falls into a hopper, by which it is conveyed by spouts into small hoppers, placed over one side of each pair of millstones. From these hoppers there are spouts placed in nearly a horizontal line, which spouts conduct the corn from the hoppers to the eye of the millstone. They are attached to the hopper, so as to admit of a horizontal motion, which is effected by a projecting part of the axle or spindle of the stone, called a damsel. It is shaped like a cross, so that, by the revolution of the millstone, it keeps tapping the end of the spout, and gives a rapid vibratory motion to it, which causes a regular supply of corn to enter the eye of the stone; by the action of the stones the corn is reduced to flour, which passes, by means of spouts, into the troughs on the ground floor.
