THE MANUFACTURE OF CLOTH.
In the present limited and daily declining condition of the woollen manufacture in Ireland, so few individuals in the country can be acquainted with the mode of preparing the clothing of the sheep, and altering its form so as to make it suitable and fit for the clothing of man, that we deem a short account of the various processes through which it passes may be acceptable to many of our readers.
When the sheep-shearer has taken off the fleece, he ties it up in a peculiar knot, which is not opened again until the wool-sorter takes it in hands. It is his business to open it, and having spread the fleece upon a table, and cast his eye over it, he separates it into the number of sorts required, the wool being of different degrees of fineness upon different parts of the animal. The coarse qualities of fleeces, from which low descriptions of cloths, kerseys, blankets, and friezes are made, are seldom divided into more than three sorts, the finer into four or five, and the finest Saxony into seven, eight, and sometimes nine. With the latter we have little to do in this country, there being but one factory (that of Messrs Willans) where it is worked; and we shall therefore merely follow the progress of a piece of ordinary coarse cloth, there being but little difference between it and the finest in the general detail: indeed very little at all, except in the additional care and expense.
The sorted wool having been carefully examined by women, and freed from straws and motes, is taken to the scouring department attached to the dye-house, where it is immersed in a hot ley with soap, and well scoured, after which it is washed in clean water and left to drain.
It is then coloured, and either allowed to drain, or the colouring matter is wrung out, and it is again washed in water until the water runs from it unsullied. The apparatus in which it undergoes this process is called “the washing-box:” one side and the bottom being of metal perforated with innumerable small holes, the water has free ingress and egress, whilst the wool is securely retained. Having been thoroughly cleansed, it is taken to the drying-loft, if the weather be fine, or to the stove if it be unfavourable, and there perfectly dried. From thence it is carried to the factory, and placed in the first machine called “the willow,” or more generally “the devil”—a machine formed of five or six cylinders of different sizes, armed with steel spikes three or four inches long: the motion of the cylinders being contrary, the spikes pass between each other, tearing the wool open if it should have clotted or got into lumps. Cheviot and Scotch wools, and wools damaged by shipwreck, must be willowed before they can be even scoured, in consequence of their being always matted.
The willow, and all the machines which shall be subsequently mentioned in this paper, are driven by the water-wheel or steam-engine—in this country almost uniformly by the former. Having been thoroughly opened by the willow, the wool is spread upon a floor and oiled, about a quart of fine olive oil being the proportion to every stone weight of wool. The effect of the oil is to cause the fibres of the wool to separate more easily upon the carding-machines, and prevent the too rapid wearing of the cards.
The next machine that takes up the work is called “the teazer:” it has a greater number of cylinders than the willow, with shorter teeth, about an inch in length, and hooked, and some of the cylinders have coarse wire cards. Having passed twice or thrice through the teazer, the wool is transferred to that part of the mill called, by way of pre-eminence, “the machine-room,” where the great scribbling machines, or, as they are styled, “scribblers,” are placed. These machines have a great number of cylinders of different sizes covered with wire cards of various degrees of fineness, so arranged that they take the wool from one another, separating the fibres, and transferring it until it has passed quite over every cylinder, and is carded out at the farther end of the machine (sixteen or eighteen feet from where it was put in) in a thin flake like gauze. Having been run through two or three scribblers of various fineness, it is passed to the carding machine, or “carder,” which resembles the “scribbler,” but is smaller, and instead of the wool falling out at the end in a flake, it is caught by a fluted cylinder of wood, which, revolving in a semi-cylindrical box, divides and converts it into separate soft rolls, about the thickness of ordinary sash rope; and these are thrown out upon a sheet of canvass stretched horizontally upon rollers, which from its slowly moving, so as to prevent one roll from falling upon another, is called “the creeper.” The rolls are taken to “the billy,” a sort of preliminary spinning-machine, sometimes worked by the water-wheel, but (as yet, especially in Ireland) more generally by a man called a “slubber,” who is enabled by it to form from fifty to one hundred threads at a time, children being employed to stick the ends of the rolls together, which is done by lapping a small portion of the tip of one on the other which lies on the “billy-sheet,” and then giving them a slight rub. The soft thick thread which the slubber forms is made up in conical rolls or “cops,” and is taken to the spinning-machine, “the mule,” which has now quite superseded the spinning-jenny, which in its day superseded the spinning-wheel. The wheel could spin only one thread at a time: the jenny was first made to spin thirty, then forty, then fifty, sixty, seventy, and eighty threads at once, by a man’s hand. By the “mule,” worked by water, a man can now spin from five hundred to one thousand threads of woollen yarn, and of cotton two or three thousand, at once.
The thread for the warp is taken from the mule to the “warping-mill,” where it is prepared according to the number of threads for the breadth of the cloth, the length arranged, and being tied up in a peculiar kind of ball, it is called a “warp,” and is taken to the sizing shop, where it is dipped in melted size; and having been opened, perfectly saturated, and wrung out gently, it is carried to the field, or stove, to be dried. The weaver then fixes it in the loom, and procures the “weft” thread, which is spun differently from the warp, and is wound upon wooden bobbins; having wetted these in water, he fixes one in his shuttle, and the threads of the warp being lifted alternately, and the shuttle shot between them, the beam of the loom strikes each thread home, and in due time the piece is woven. A good weaver with a sound warp can weave in a hand-loom from six to nine yards of cloth in a day, but with the new power-loom he can weave twenty.
The cloth when taken out of the loom is examined by the overseer, and having been passed and dried, is taken to the “scouring-machine,” where it is submitted to the action of a strong ley, with fullers’-earth, &c., and worked by the rollers of the machine until both the oil and size have been extracted; it is then washed clean with water, taken out, and dried. It is next transferred to the tuck-mill, where it is spread out, a large quantity of melted soap poured upon it, and being rolled up in a peculiar manner, it is placed in “the stock,” where two huge hammers made of oak, weighing from two to three cwt. each, called “stock-feet,” being raised by a wheel and then let go, fall upon it alternately, until the soap has been forced through every part of it, and the cloth has narrowed, or, to speak technically, “milled in,” a half yard or three quarters, and shortened a fourth or fifth of its length, when it is pronounced to be “milled.” It is then again placed in the “washing-machine,” washed clean, and transferred to the “gig-mill.” The “gig” is a machine having a large cylinder in which teasles, a vegetable production somewhat resembling thistle tops or burs, are set, and the wet cloth being dragged by a set of rollers against the hooked spikes of the teasles, whilst the cylinder in which they are set goes rapidly round in a contrary direction, a portion of the short fibres of the wool have one of their ends disengaged and exhibited upon the surface of the cloth, forming what is called the pile or face: this process is called “raising.” When the piece has been sufficiently raised, it is taken to the “tenter field,” and stretched on frames called “tenters,” by means of hooks, to the proper length and breadth, and it remains thus until thoroughly dried, when it is carried to the “shearing loft,” where immense shears or machines called “knives” are passed over the surface, cutting all the wool on the face to an equal length. One of the improved knives can do as much work as twenty hand-shearers did formerly. Having received what is technically called a “cut” or two, it is returned to the gig mill to be “struck,” that is, “raised,” or submitted to the action of the gig in a dry state, and it then goes back again to the shear loft, and receives three or four more cuts on the face. It is then passed to the “burlers,” women who pick out all motes that have accidentally clung to or become embodied in the cloth, with steel pincers having very sharp points called “burling irons.”