Page:The history of silk, cotton, linen, wool, and other fibrous substances 2.djvu/433

 *[Footnote: by which the adhering tow is removed from them. The simplest and most common construction is to place the heckles upon the surface of a horizontal cylinder, while the flax is held either by mechanical means or by the hand during its exposure to the heckle points. Many machines have been made upon this principle. It is proper in this case to set the heckle teeth obliquely in the direction in which the cylinder turns, whereby they penetrate the fibres in a more parallel line, effect their separation more easily, and cause less waste in torn filaments. To conduct the flax upon the cylinders, two horizontal fluted rollers of iron are employed, which can be so modified in a moment by a lever as to present the flax more or less to the heckling mechanism. The operator seizes a tress lock of flax with her hand and introduces it between the fluted rollers, so that the tips on which the operation must begin, reach the heckles first, and by degrees the advancing flax gets heckled through two thirds or three fourths of its length, after which the tress or strick is turned, and its other end is subjected to the same process. By its somewhat rapid revolution the heckle cylinder creates a current of air which not only carries away the boomy particles, but also spreads out the flax like a sheaf of corn upon the spikes, effecting the same object as is done by the dexterous swing of the hand. The tow collects betwixt the teeth of the heckle, and may, when its quantity has become considerable, be removed in the form of a flock of parallel layers.

Flax has been for a long period spun wet in the mills; a method no doubt copied from the practice of housewives moistening their yarn with their saliva at the domestic wheel. Within a few years the important improvement has been introduced of substituting hot for cold water, in the troughs through which the fibres in the act of spinning pass. By this means a much finer, smoother, and more uniform thread can be spun than in the old way. The flax formerly spun to twelve pounds a bundle is, with hot water, spun to six. The inconvenience of the spray thrown from the yarn on the fliers remains, aggravated by increased heat and dampness of the room where this hot process goes on. Being a new expedient, it receives daily changes and ameliorations. When first employed, the troughs of hot water were quite open; they are now usually covered in, so as almost entirely to obviate the objections to which they were previously liable. With the covers has been also introduced a new method of piecening or joining on any end, which may have been run down, namely, by splicing it to the adjoining roving, whereby it is carried through the water without imposing a necessity on the spinner to put her hand into the water at all. In some places she uses a wire, for the purpose of drawing through the end of the roving to mend a broken yarn.

This may be considered the inherent evil of flax-spinning,—the spray thrown off by the wet yarn, as it whirls about with the flier of the spindles. A working dress, indeed, is generally worn by the spinners; but, unless it be made of stuff impermeable to water, like Mackintosh's cloth, it will soon become uncomfortable, and cause injury to health by keeping the body continually in a hot bath. In some mills, water-proof cloth and leather aprons have actually been introduced, which are the only practicable remedy; for the free space which must be left round the spindles for the spinner to see them play, is incompatible with any kind of fixed guard or parapluie.]