Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 91.djvu/898

 Making Flour from Pigskin

��A de-hairing machine leaves the skin so free from dirt that the "cracklings" can be used for bread

By Lloyd E. Darling

��IN Chicago a certain factory makes a business of putting out what are called i "hog de-hairing" machines. The func- tion of these devices is to clean up a hog after the slaughter — thereby supplanting an old-fashioned process which made use of knives that scraped hogs razor- fashion. Porkers used to emerge from this latter process looking like an old-time Yankee — that is, reasonably smooth-shaven as to face, but exhibiting a sizable beard under their chins that the mechanically-wielded knives hadn't been able to reach. For the same reason the under side of their legs was left unshaved.

With the newer kind of machine, how- ever, the pigs emerge thoroughly cleaned up — so immaculate in fact that they are referred to in the pork-packing profession as "polished." This is accomplished by thoroughly scalding the hogs in the usual fashion, and then running them through a machine which is nothing more nor less than a battery of "beaters." The beaters are built up of thick canvas or rubber belting bent in the form of loops and studded with an- gular metal pieces which do the actual work of "polish- ing" a hog. These loops are attached to steel shaft- ing which is revolved at a rapid rate by means of suit- able chains and gearing.

A hog about to be polished is made to run the gauntlet of a i whole row of these rapidly- revolving shafts, armored as they are with their steel-studded | loops of belting. He is spanked, i and batted, and massaged, and rolled over and over by the flying loops. They remove his whole outer skin or "scarf" at the same time that the hair de- parts. Luckily he is dead or he might seriously, object to such treatment. Some of the loops revolve up and down and the Th, ,. . others laterally, thus causing its battery" of the hog in his moving around which polish

����Coming direct from the scalding tub the hogs are now ready for the final polishing

to be struck from all angles so that every portion of his anatomy is reached. There is no Yankee beard effect left when these machines get through with him. His own mother wouldn't know him, as the saying goes, he is so much changed in color and general state of cleanliness.

The machines are built in a variety of forms, through some of which the hogs go vertically, through others horizon- tally. The machines work with great rapidity as compared with old knife-scraping forms. Some of them have a capac- ity of one thoroughly cleaned hog per second.

These hog-cleaning ma- chines have been installed now in practically all of the commercial packing plants of the country. The fact that they so thoroughly clean the porkers is far-reaching in its effect, especially from the consumers' point of view.

��machine with "beaters" up the hogs

���of the beaters; showing how they are attached to the central shafting

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