Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XVI.djvu/742

 718 WOOL (MANUFACTUBES OF) were idle. The value of the imports of wool- len manufactures into the United States during the years ending June 30, 1874 and 1875, has been as follows : KINDS. 1874. 1875. $18,016,671 $18,680,288 Woollen rags, shoddy, mungo, 151,156 149 109 Shawls 2,181,687 2,143,403 Blankets. 18472 12 604 Carpets 8,649,81)3 2,643,932 Dress goods 21,162,635 19,759.488 Hosiery, skirts, and drawers 505,109 6S3.761 Other manufactures 6/202,895 6,587,024 Total $46,383,183 $44,609,704 Processes of Woollen Manufacture. If a piece of superfine broadcloth, as requiring in succes- sion all the operations upon the wool, yarn, and fabric needful for woollens of any sort, be taken as the representative of the whole class, the following are the processes through which the materials are passed : 1, sorting the wool ; 2, scouring ; 8, washing ; 4, drying ; 5, dyeing (when dyed in the wool) ; 6, willying ; 7, pick- ing or teasing; 8, moating; 9, oiling; 10, scribbling; 11, plucking; 12, carding; 13, stubbing; 14, spinning; 15, reeling; 16, warp- ing; 17, beaming; 18, singeing, sizing, and other preparation of the threads for 19, weaving ; 20, scouring ; 21, dyeing (when dyed in the piece) ; 22, drying or tentering ; 23, burling; 24, milling or fulling; 25, scouring; 26, drying, or tentering, again ; 27, raising, dressing, or toasling ; 28, shearing ; 29, boiling ; 30, brushing; 31, picking; 32, drawing and marking ; 33, pressing ; 34, steaming ; 35, fold- ing or packing. The shearing and pressing are sometimes repeated, the processes of picking, drawing, and marking then coming between them on this second application. Of these processes, more than one half of which are now effected by machinery, some have already been considered in separate articles. (See CAKDS, DTEING, FULLIXG, TEASEL, and WEAV- ING.) Of the remaining processes, some are too simple to require particular description, and the others are too technical to be well un- derstood except by actual observation of the processes themselves. The sorting of the wool, as determining the different qualities that shall be mixed for a given quality of cloth, is important. The qualities to be considered in this sorting are chiefly those of fineness, softness, trueness, strength, color, cleanness, and weight, as previously explained. In the English factories, the usual distinctions are into the grades known as " prime, choice, su- perhead, head, downrights, seconds, fine abb, coarse abb, livery, and breech." In the United States, the grades made by merchants of pulled and clipped or fleece wools, and in the latter of short staple and long staple, or clothing and combing wools, are at the factories again sub- divided each into a definite number of sorts, presenting a regular gradation of quality. Af- ter sorting, the several packs of wool are sepa- rately scoured, washed, and dried. The scour- ing is effected by soaking the wool in stale urine, or in an alkaline lye heated to 120 ; the washing, by placing the wool, after removal from the lye, within wire baskets in running water, or by rinsing in warm suds, and after- ward in clean water ; and the drying is much facilitated by subjecting the rinsed wool to pressure in passing it between iron rollers. If the cloth is not to be white, it is either wool- dyed or piece-dyed. If the former, the dyeing follows directly on the scouring or washing. Common colors, as browns and olives, are dyed by the larger manufacturers; but the true colors, as blue, black, and green, and those of all cloths of the smaller manufactories, are left to the special dyers. The process of willying or twillying (a term probably derived from winnowing) is analogous to that of bat- ting or scutching in cotton manufacture ; the object is to disentangle and open the locks, and free them of sand or other loose impurities. One of the best forms of willy is that in which a hollow truncated cone, with four bars pro- jected beyond but running parallel to its sur- faces, and armed with iron spikes, revolves 300 to 400 times per minute within an outer cylinder, armed on the inside with similar spikes. The wool, fed to the smaller end of the cone by an endless apron, travels in re- volving by virtue of centrifugal force to the larger ; and after being thus opened and beat- en up, it escapes into a wire cylinder or re- ceptacle provided with a fan, which blows away the disengaged dust, and finally lays tho cleaned wool upon another apron in a con- tinuous sheet. Coarser wools for cloths are willied more than once, sometimes before dye- ing, and again after oiling and scribbling. Some larger impurities, such as the willy does not remove, as burs, pitch, or dirt, are then picked out of the wool while spread upon a wire screen, by boys or women ; this includes both the picking and moating, the persons engaged being called wool moaters. The wool is then spread npon a floor, sprinkled with olive oil, and well beaten with staves. It is thus prepared for the scribbling machine, the purpose of which is further to open and cleanse the fibres. This process is really a coarser carding, effected by passing the wool successively between several cylinders studded with rows of teeth or wires, and made to re- volve rapidly ; the wool is conveyed to the cylinders by an apron, and given forth at the last in a delicate sheet, which is wound on a revolving roller. This operation also may be repeated two or three times. From the card- ing machine, through which the wool is after- ward passed, it is delivered in the form of slender cylinders or pipes, called cardings. Slubbing, which is a preparatory spinning, is performed by the slubbing billy, and consists in drawing out and twisting the cardings to the state of a soft, weak thread. This is ef-