The Repertory of Arts, Manufactures, and Agriculture. Consisting of Original Communications, Specifications of Patent Inventions, Practical and Intere (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1795 Excerpt: ... LVII. Conclusion os M. Monge's Observations on the Mechanism of Felting. (from p. 360.) 1 H E operation of fulling woollen cloths has so much affinity with that of felting, that I think it may not be improper in this place to make some observations upon it. The asperities with which the surface of wool is every where surrounded, and the disposition which it has to assume a progressive motion towards the root, render the spinning of wool, and making it into cloth, difficult operations. In order to spin wool, and afterwards to weave it, we are obliged to cover its sibres with a coating of oil, which, silling the cavities, renders the asperities less sensible; in the same way as oil, when rubbed over the surface of a very sine sile, renders it still less rough. When the piece of cloth 2 is is finished, it must be cleansed from this oil; which, besides giving it a disagreeable smell, would cause it to soil whatever it came in contact with, and would prevent its taking the colour which is intended to be given to it by the dyer. To deprive it of the oil, it is carried to the fullingmill, where it is beat with hammers in a trough full of water, in which some clay has been mixed; the clay combines with the oil which it separates from the cloth, and both together are ' washed away by the fresh water which is brought to it by the machine; thus, after a certain time, the oil is entirely washed out of the cloth. But the scouring of the cloth is not the only object in fulling it; the alternate pressure given by the mallets to the piece of cloth occasions, especially when the scouring is pretty far advanced, an effect analogous to that which is produced upon hats by the hands of the hatter; the fibres of wool which compose one of the threads, whether of the warp or the w...