THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 20TH OF JULY 1979 AT 16 COWGILL STREET, EARBY. THE INFORMANT IS HORACE THORNTON, TAPER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
We are continuing the description of the photographs on taping in the Bancroft Folio.
So that’s picture 15, now then.
R- Now, this shows the front of the tape, and the sheet of yarn where it goes through this comb which is called a raddle. And at one side of the raddle you twine [turn] a wheel and it opens it out to different widths. If you are running 43” beams you can turn this in just to the exact width.
Aye, it’s like lazy tongs isn’t it.
R- Yes. And, or, at this side you can turn it from left to right, move it backwards or forwards.
Move it bodily, yes.
R- Because all weavers beams, there’s never two alike. And when you’ve doffed a warp and starting running again, your sheet might not be full up to the flange. It has to be right tight up to the flange or else they
(50)
won’t weave properly. Or the beam might be an inch to one side, so you move the raddle with the right hand side screw and move it till you are exactly touching the flange at each side.
That's it.
R- And then, when you’ve done that you get your speed on, see that everything’s all right, walk round the tape to see that your size is all right and it’s boiling and size is coming in, feel at your yarn, and if it’s the proper temperature, humidity, the percentage of moisture they want you can tell all that by feeling with your fingers whether they're soft or hard, whether you think there is enough size in or not. And then ...
There is also a bar on there, isn’t there Horace, that’ll lift the sheet clear of that.
R- Yes. Now when your set’s out you can turn that handle over and it lifts the sheet clear of the raddle, that’s when you are commencing gaiting up again. That's the only time that you use [lift?] your raddle, when the set’s out but I suppose we'll come to that later.
(100)
Yes, we’ll come to that in gaiting.
R- Now, picture 16, there's a rod across here with a spring on. Now that is for putting your side ends over or any spare ends. Now sometimes you’ll be running a set, two widths of narrow cloth, and you want a selvedge on each side of the cloth. So you put the selvedge on to the stand at the back and run them through and the selvedge is always stronger yarn than the warp, that is so as they’ll weave without the side of the cloth breaking down.
It’s very often doubled, isn’t it Horace. Yes?
R- Yes. Or it’s twofold yarn, Egyptian yarn. And you put your edge ends over here, and under these rods, and right into the centre here. If you have to have six edge ends at each side, you have six at this side, and then twelve in the middle, that is six for each piece of cloth, and then six at the other side.
Yes. They often used to run yarn through like that. And I can tell you when I’ve seen them use that as well. If they have had a mistake in a set of beams and it’s been happen, you know, four or five ends down or it’s been a very bad set and it’s been running badly, and some are going down all the time, they'll put ...
R- Yes. You put bobbins on at the back.
(150)
(5 min)
Put bobbins on a creel at the back yes.
R- To make the extra ends up.
Yes. And then those go over that spring.
R- Yes they do.
Yes. And some of them, and I think, if I remember rightly, that spring had a glass rod through the middle of it so that it’d run easy. Yes.
R- Yes. Well now then, is it on a winding, on a beaming frame that they can have these glass rods for the yarn to ran over? You used to get one of these glass rods, spare, off a beaming frame.
Yes well, that's what those will have come off.
R- And put it through there. That’s where it’d be.
Because we used to have an old beaming frame there and it were broken up. And I’ll bet that’s where those glass rods came from.
R- And they were usually blue.
Yes, that’s it.
R- And that blue was so you could see the ends running over in the beaming frame, that was the whole idea.
That’s it. Yes, they were blue. There was one at the front and one at the back.
R- And this raddle, when you’re gaiting up you have to see that you get a good sheet. And you reckon it up, and your number of pins in the raddle and it’d perhaps go five to a dent. And so you start at one side and you count them in, five in every dent from one to the other, that gives you a perfect sheet. It’s better for the weaver, if you didn't get a good sheet and there were a lot more in one place than the other, they tend to build up do the ends in that place. You have an uneven warp and put more tension onto the yarn.
(200)
That’s it, aye.
R- You’ve got to get a good sheet. And if a manager’s coming round, the shed manager, he’ll look at your sheet.
Aye in front of the raddle, between the raddle and the headstock, between the raddle and the warp. Yes?
R- Yes. To see if you have a good sheet.
Yes. What’s that there for?
R- That’s the marker. Now, you have a clock at…
Yes, we’ll get a picture of that in a minute or two.
R- Yes, that’s it. Now, them are all the rods. When the sheet’s running through the size behind it, it’s all stuck together in a mass. It’s almost the same as a sheet of paper coming through.
Is that the reason why they call them tapes? Because it is like a tape when it comes through. I’ve often wondered. Aye.
R- It’s like a tape, yes. Of course It is. When you finish and you’re running, when you’ve tied the fresh set on and you are running the spare through with no rods in it comes off like a flat sheet.
[When you are gaiting a fresh set of back beams you have to run the knots through before you start making a weaver’s warp you have an amount of wastage equal to the length of the sheet in the tape machine.]
That's it.
R- And if you want any thrums for tying up you pull them off.
[If the tape is split into smaller widths and twisted up it becomes very strong and is used for tying things up. The dialect name is ‘thrums’]
That’s it, yes.
R- And if the twister wants some for tying up with, he’ll come in and say so.
Yes, we’ll come to that later. Who uses them, the thrums.
R- I want some thrums, put plenty of size on.
Aye, and if you’ve got a lot of tomato plants want tying up and all.
R- Yes, and gardeners, anybody, they’re used in the garden for tying peas up, stringing beans or anything.
Yes that’s it.
R- Of course…
I’ve seen an old steam pipe hung up with them as well, I tell you, big bunches!
R- Yes, oh yes, and the taper uses thrums to tie his warps up with.
(250)
But when it’s coming off the cylinders it’s dry and it’s like a sheet of paper. So the weaver couldn’t weave it so you have to put rods in. You put a big rod in that splits your eight beams into four top and four bottom. And then you have another two rods to put in, in each sheet. You see there is one, two, three, four and he’s a carrying rod somewhere. No, one, two, three, four, five. He’s using one as a carrying rod because for a eight beam set, if it is an eight beam set, there should only be seven, it’s a splitting rod.
Yes. Now that isn’t necessarily the same set that we’ve shown on those other pictures.
R- Oh, I see.
Now wait a minute, wait a minute, let me just think. No it will be, it is the same set that we've shown on the other pictures.
R- Well, you see it’s four at the top and four at the bottom and you should have ... Oh, he’s right, he’ll have a four and a three and he has a rod to split every two you see. Five rods, it's right, but I don’t know whether there’s picture of em putting the bands in at the back.
(10 min)
Yes there is. Yes there is when we get on to gaiting. And now, 17 is an overall view of the headstock of that tape.
R- Yes. And number 18.
Now, on 17 you were pointing out that I have committed a gross error here through not knowing enough about the tape. And you were talking about the conical pulleys underneath.
(300)
R- Yes. Well, there’s two cone pulleys under a tape and one has the thin end, thin end of the taper at one end and the thick end of the other at the same end. And it has, say on a heavy tape, it’ll have three belts on for driving off the positive drive to the headstock. And now, the right hand side cone always goes at the same speed as the belt when it’s running at full speed. And you can vary the front end of the tape. Now when you've got running you feel at the yarn, and if you think it’s not drying and you've every pound of steam on as possible and it’s not dry you've to twine your cone down.
Aye. So you turn the little handle, that ...
R- There at this…
On this photograph it’s just below the weight on the lever that lifts the pressure roller up.
R- Yes. And you turn that handle, and it brings the belts nearer the end of the cone pulleys. Consequently it makes the tape run slower.
Yes, it’s like an infinitely variable gear, because the…
R- Drive, yes it is.
... large cone is opposite the small end of the other cone so that the total diameter is the same all the way across but it makes the ratio of the drive different.
(350)
R- Yes. And when you’ve been stopped for anything and it’s got very dry you don’t alter your steam you just twine your belts up, and make it go faster.
Speed the tape up until ...
R- But on the tapes at Johnsons they had a clock here.
Yes? A thermometer?
R- No. It’s the moisture content of the yarn. The humidity of the yarn.
Aye, humidity. Yes.
R- And it should be at eight, that’s the centre. It started at nothing, and went up to 12 I think. But you try to run it with your point at the top ...
What, it was about 8% was it?
R- Yes, and you had to set it with dials, you could set this. You had to alter it so that it .. I’ve lost the word.
You used to zero it before you started.
R- Yes. Zero it before you start. And you turn one and something else. You see you just did it automatically.
That’s it.
R- I’ve forgotten the exact [method] ... but you zeroed it at the morning, and soon as you got running and everything was steady, that point'd just stop at the top, and you're getting 8% moisture in. You could please yourself about the moisture content what you put in, but that were the best for weaving conditions. Well, if it started going down that meant you were
(400)
(15 min)
getting too dry, you twined up a bit.
Aye, that’s it.
R- For instance, it your steam were well up you’d be getting too dry. Now, if your steam were down and you were getting down, you just twined it down. Only an inch or two and you kept your eye on it till it settled down again. Steam came up again and you see there it’s [drying more] Steam came up and you could keep it spot on. If the engine was running right and everything else were right. And if you got a lapper on your cylinder that were going round and round the cylinder, that caused a damp patch, that were a good guide, your pointer would go over to moist. You knew immediately by watching that. You could be sat there on your stool and if went over quickly you knew that you’d a lapper on.
Aye, that’d be a good thing.
R- Yes. They were as good as anything that was ever put on a tape, Johnsons had them.
Bancroft didn’t.
R- No. But they had a name for them. And they were just fixed there and a wire come down, a piece of electric cable come down, like a wire come down here and there were a little screw here and you screwed it on there, it fixed on there.
Yes, that's it. Aye, just at the front of the cylinder, just where the sheet was coming off the cylinder.
R- Yes off this roller. That’s where you took it from.
Ah, off the roller, just where it comes up off the fans . Yes.
R- Yes, just there, off the roller. Aye. You’d tell immediately if there was anything wrong at the back but invariably it were a lapper on your cylinder. Or round your copper roller, anything you see? They were a wonderful thing, it took a lot of worry out of it. If you hadn't that, you’d always to be feeling and feeling.
(450)
Aye, you’d have to walk round and…yes.
R- Yes. And they had another thing, we called it the magic eye at Johnsons. Just like looking down a spy glass. And you opened the end of it and got a bit of size on your finger, dabbed it under this glass and closed it, looked through, and it gave you the strength of your sizing.
Aye.
R- Yes. Oh aye, it showed dark and light. And there were figures; all that you’d got to do was test your size and you knew whether it were going down and mixed right or not. Each tape, well there were one apiece, each taper had one. We called it magic eye but it had a name on it.
Aye. It would have a trade name. But there you are you see, these are the things…
R- They cost £12 each and they were worth their weight in gold.
Yes, but I mean these were the things I could never understand at Bancroft you know. I mean things like that and the same applied to the engine and the shafting. I mean, there should have been a rev counter on the engine and a thermometer at the chimney base, so that you knew what the flue temperature was.
R- Did you have any for the smoke or anything?
Oh aye, they should have the C02 meter, and the dark smoke meter but they didn’t.
R- They had them all here, they had them all down here but they weren’t working! They were working but they didn’t put papers in. [Charts]
Yes but I mean you should have these things because then you know what's going on. I mean even a simple thing like I always used to say that the simplest thing we could have had at Bancroft was a thermometer on the pipe that came down from the connies to the feed pump and then we’d know
(500)
(20 min)
what the temperature of the water was going back into the boiler. We didn’t even have that.
R- But Johnsons didn’t need high speed tapes that cost thousand and thousand of pounds that were always going wrong. That was the sort of tape you needed [like Bancroft], and that meter there and this spy-glass and taking care when you were mixing.
I know, one of the great things about those tapes, Jim said many a time one of the great things about these tapes at Bancroft, these old tapes we are looking at now, they were out of date and antiquated and old fashioned but the thing was that you could tape anything on them.
R- Anything.
Anything you wanted.
R- And when I had that double tape I could tape light stuff, I could tape the heaviest and two at once. No trouble, it just went on and on and on and on. And any special stuff or any extra heavy stuff, the tape that I were on had to do it. Now, the others were always going wrong, you couldn’t rely on it. The cylinders were covered with this Teflon.
Oh, this Teflon stuff. Yes, that’s it, non-stick.
R- Teflon yes. But seven cylinders, all covered with that. Well, your side ends are running round. Well, how long did you think it were before the side ends, strong two fold yarn had worn that stuff off?
Aye, it wore the Teflon off.
R- Yes. And they were sticking all round the cylinders. And you know, it had cost a fortune to have them re-covered. There were a hundred and one things that were wrong with that fancy tape that they got at Johnsons. Everything about it, whoever built that tape, they’d never studied the job out, they never had any conversation with the taper and asked him what he thought about it.
They weren’t tapers, yes.
(550)
R- Like the drag roller here, we always used a piece of flannel.
Yes, like those at Bancroft were covered with flannel, that one on that tape’s covered with flannel you know.
R- Well, this new tape when it came, it were covered with rubber. You know the same sort of stuff that they put on sand rollers with little pimples on. Well, that were the sort of stuff it was covered with. Now they couldn't get them perfectly touching. Well, just imagine with 420 ends. You started up and before you had run ten minutes all the ends had dropped down in these nicks, gone. So the firm had to come, take it off and put a rubber sleeve on. And then we run a week or two with this rubber sleeve on, it went all sticky, the rubber perished with the damp sized yarn coming over it all the time. And mainly at the edges where the side ends were, they had dug in deeper, it all stuck to your fingers. To get over that we had to cover it with flannel.
Aye, it got back to the flannel covered roller at the finish. Aye.
R- Back to the flannel rollers. But we’ll go down and have a look at that tape and I’ll show you a lot of snags that are still on and they don’t use, and things that were on they have taken off. At the back of the tape it came off instead of having a tin roller to go over, we had a heavy roller. Well, with Johnson’s stuff the sheet wouldn’t turn it.
Aye, too light, not enough grip on it.
R- And it were bowed. On the new machine it were bowed, it wouldn’t turn.
(600)
(25 min)
it so we had to miss that. And then, after that they had a splitting rod. Well, before the sow box there was a splitting rod. Well, after the sow box there were a heavy rod for splitting, it were better when it had been split before it got on to the cylinders. That were all right but first time or two, like when you stopped at night, your sized, your sheet would come off out of the sow box and on to these splitting rollers before it went on to the cylinders, you just stopped. Well, next morning when you come to
start, your sheet had gone hard, it’d just stuck to these big splitting rollers.
Aye, dried during the night.
R- Just imagine, 420 ends, where it had gone to.
Aye, just pulled it in two.
R- So that were discarded. And all the cylinders, each cylinder had a separate drain pipe and it went in here and then along, the pipe went inside and into the bottom of the cylinder. Each cylinder had a drain pipe in. And after running a few months the cylinder started filling up with water. Well, they took them out, and where they went in at the shaft end, well the weight of the cylinders had been bowing them down and it had worn them through, they had lost all the suction. A hole in just where it
went in at the shaft end. They were all alike. And each one had a mercury switch on, well sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn’t. They’d get the electrician in and take the glasses out and get them going again. You see, you could set the temperature, each cylinder had a clock on for setting for the temperature. Well, sometimes they worked and sometimes they didn’t. But what good were they on stuff like this? No good whatever. Well, I were new on to that tape and we were sent to where they were making them for a month. You went every morning.
Where were that at?
R- Darwen. That was where they were making them. It were a sizing firm that had getten one of these. Pratt’s were making them and they’d put one in there, and they had a contract to learn tapers that were used to the old tapes. Well, you got a month. After the first week I went down to Johnsons to report and go over there. And “What do you think about it? Grand do yonder, aren’t they?” I says “They are no bloody good at all!” Brrrr! He blew his top right away, “What makes you say that?” “Well - I said - A tape that I’m supposed to be learning on, there were three fitters round it all the time, and a taper and a labourer, all the time 1 have been there this week there were things dropping off it. Now that’s a good recommendation isn’t it?” Anyway, he said we’ve bought it, it’s ordered and nothing can be done about it. “You’ll have to carry on.” So eventually the tape come to be ready.
(30 min)
(700)
Well, I didn’t know what should be on and what shouldn’t be on. If they give you a new article and say “Now then, it’s ready.” I started it up. Crowther says run it on slow a bit. So I ran it and tried various things to see if they were working, and put a bit more steam on and all at once there were an almighty bang and there was a big driving chain came snaking out from here. It drove around every cylinder. About so square.
Aye, about an inch and a half across, right.
R- Yes, it drove everything right from the back to the front you see. A big chain snaked in a heap and finished with one end were fastened to the stretch meter, your tension meter they had here. And “Hell! What happened there!” I started looking round, it had come in two. You know, these here patent links, well the link had been put in, but the plate had never been put on.
Aye.
R- We couldn’t find any plate anywhere and the bit of clip to put on.
Aye, the split link. Aye.
R- Aye, that were missing altogether. Well, it had spoiled this stretch affair. There were two on, there were one there and one there, to regulate...
Tension, aye.
R- Tension meter. So that meant a new one and straighten a lot of guards out that were hanging about. There were supposed to be guards all down here, well they should have been fixed with Allen screws, some had one in some had two in and they were just falling about.
So I ran it about a week empty and it gets to Monday morning, “You mun gait
it up.” So I gaited up and were running the best way I could. And there’s a chap come on, I knew who it were, it were the traveller for them that had the job of selling them, and he started looking round, and he says Where’s this such a thing? And I don’t know. Where’s such a thing, where are your feelers for your moisture content? Well, I told him, this is what I’d been put onto. He said there should have been three feelers across here on a rod like you could let it down, when you got going you let it down, so as that there were some feelers rested on your yarn.
Yes, across where it comes up near, just at the front of the cylinder, first cylinder.
(750)
R- Yes. The same principle as here on this roller. The same principle as on the old tape where the moisture meter were. Worked to a big fancy box here like a
television. There were flashing lights, and red lights and green lights and dry and wet and one thing and another. Well - I says - 1 don’t know, that’s as I come on to it. And he started looking round, he said they should all come in a big box, they’d all fit into a right big square box. He says, have you seen anything of a big box? I says well, I am not working here usually, I’m working down the other shed. And that were the first I had seen on it. He started looking round and he says well, I've found the box, it’s up there, full of bricks. It was where they had been breaking a fresh doorway through and they started throwing these bricks out, hundreds of bricks. And I was still frigging about this machine and he come back in a bit and says I’ve found odd bits but they are all under the bricks. The chaps that had been breaking this hole out, they wanted something handy to put the bricks in, so they filled that. And then when it all come out there’d been such a rush on for these tapes, they hadn’t enough fitters for the machines that were going out, so a fitter’s come and, and he’d put on what had landed and got a semblance of a frame up and then when he had done them he went away. Well, in the meantime some more parts came, but of course Johnson’s couldn’t wait for the fitter coming back and they set Stuart Nutter on, that was a lad, an apprentice tackler, to carry on assembling the tape. And that were what had happened, they’d set him on but half of it weren’t put up right. There were keys and all sorts hadn’t been tightened up, all these guards here that had one Allen screw in, he’d put the chain on and not rut the clip on. I suppose he had never seen one before.
(35 min)
So there were no case against the firm then?
R- No. And all the things that should have been on here and everywhere else were in the bottom of this box, under the bricks.
Aye, if he didn’t know what they were he had left them in the box.
(800)
R- No, he left them in the box. Well, I doubt whether he’d be able to read blueprints, if there were blueprints with them. There were all sorts missing, you never saw such a shambles in your life. And it were a rubber roller behind.
Which?
R- The squeeze roller were rubber. So when you tied up, if you tied any big knots and ran them through, the roller didn’t lift high enough up for them to go through. Well, if the knots caught two er three times, the rubber didn’t give way. It left holes in the rubber, left dents in the rubber. So when you started running there were wet blobs all across your sheet.
Aye, it were where the dents were in the rubber.
R- ... all across your yarn. You never saw such a thing in your life. So, the rubber roller had to come off, be taken off, and we had to start with a fresh roller with flannel on. And there were these bearings that never wanted oiling that seized up the first week, the blacksmith had to burn them off.
Those were in the sow box itself. Aye.
R- Yes. Blacksmith and Bob Taylor, they’d got to bring the acetylene burner and burn them off. These eccentric rods, you know how they worked. There’s right big boxes here, all the drives go into a big box and were inside here and there is nothing loose here. And the big box at that side and row of buttons. Well, they broke loose here, there were some wheels in here inside this box and they broke loose.
So that new tape had the eccentric rods on at the front, just the same as the old, that would go up and down.
R- Just the same Up and down, yes.
Why do those rollers at the front oscillate like that?
R- Well, it breaks your yarn up and makes you a better sheet. And if they weren’t, it were just like going over stationary rollers, they tend to drag and drag into ropes. But with moving like that, they don’t get chance to get into ropes, they are hitting and missing you see?
(850)
So the next picture’s 18.
R- 18.
And that’s a view of the creel, from the other side obviously.
R- Creel. Aye, this is the taper’s side, what they call the taper’s side, the taper always works down here. He can work from the other side if he is taking lappers off, there is a beam here with a lapper on the side, there. Yes, you see. you see.
Aye. That next to the back beam at the top, yes.
R- The end’s broken, it’s perhaps a rough piece on the flange. These were wood some of them.
Yes they were, they were all wood them.
R- They were wood, and if there were a little, if they had been damaged in a little splinter it’d bring the edges down, and that left one or two or three ends short on the warp. And if they didn’t watch out what they were doing it built up and built up did that, and then when the beam got lower down, the edge would fall over, get fast in the ends at the side and bring a lot more out. That were a thing they used to have to watch.
I noticed many a time, with these Manor beams, they used to have some spare ends on one of the beams many a time, and he used to go up now and again while it was running and cut that lapper off.
(40 min)
R - Yes. Well, he’d have to do.
He’d slow it down, and go up and just cut it off while it was going round.
R- Well, if the taper wasn’t careful when he was cutting a lapper off he’d dig his knife into the wood side and that damaged them as well. But there’s a strap on down here and that appears, the same as we used to do if you couldn’t get enough weight on with a clip. You fastened the strap here, wrapped it round the pike, and hung a big weight on you see. [Pike is the dialect name for the end of the shaft that sticks out of the end of the beam]
They hung a weight on here, yes.
R- There is a strap there. And that’s what he’s been using to put a bit wore tension on. Take the clip off and put a strap on and a weight on. Just hung over it, just giving enough tension to hold it from running away.
Aye, the next one’s 19. That’s the view of the complete back end of the tape.
R- This is the back end of the tape, yes.
You can see that creel on…
R- There’s the creel there where they put the side ends on. And when you have been taking a length of flannel off the roller, you might show it further on somewhere, yes.
Yes we do. This creel we are talking about is just in the front of the trunking, well, actually, it’s the back, looking from the front of the tape. But it’s just near the trunking, over the sow box. And it has rods stuck out each side, and you can put up to about, oh about twenty bobbins at each side.
R- Twenty on, but at both sides, twenty at each side. That’s about the limit of what you use for side ends, twenty ends.
(900)
And then they had another creel as well, a bigger one that they could put at the back of the back beams and use it to make up the numbers on, use it to make up the numbers if they were short of ends on the set.
R- It depended on the size of the place you were working in. With us you could get twelve and then you were up against the wall.
Yes, well, we could put another two on, there was another two frames, there was another piece ....
R- Aye. Two, four, six, eight. Yes.
Yes, there was another piece that’d bolt on to the back of that casting there. They could put another two up but it meant you couldn’t get round the back of the tape.
R- No. That were it with us, you had to push, it were a push to get round, especially with these big 26” flanges. And then ...
Picture twenty.
R- Picture number twenty, this is the old size beck where you mix your size in according to the strength you want it. So many buckets of flour; sometimes it’s farina, that’s potato flour, or sago flour, that’s the best, and cornflour. It makes a very hard, harsh size does cornflour and, and sharp.
Yes, they were on sago flour and tallow at the latter end.
R- Tallow and sago flour needs a lot of boiling. But cornflour, you used to have to leave it soaking for days on end to soften it, steeping it.
Aye, to get it till you got the grains to burst, you've got to get to burst, aye.
R- Yes, burst, yes you had. But sago flour you had to boil it one hour, sixty minutes, to be thoroughly mixed. If you didn’t boil it enough you left your sizing harsh, and then it used to wear the healds away. If there were a lot of new healds being wanted and breaking, worn away, that were one of the causes. The main cause, the roughness of the sizing, it hadn’t been boiled long enough or wasn’t pure. It came across from abroad did the sago flour and they tell me that it was dumped on the sea shore, and that was where they got the sand in see. You’d got to be particular about that. And it were the sago palm it came out of, they were palm trees and they were cut down and broken open, it were the pith inside. It isn’t a fruit, it’s the pith out of a sago palm.
(950)
(45 min)
Yes that’s it. I didn’t know that for years you know, I often wondered where tapioca came from, which is what it is, tapioca isn’t it?
R- Yes, sago, and that’s what it is, it’s the pith out of the sago palm tree. And whether they, well I suppose they keep planting more sago palms, you’d think. Or they’d be the same as the forests in England that had been cut, they’d all have disappeared by now. But anyway, there doesn’t seem to be any shortage of sago flour. And good sago flour is good, it’s the best thing there is for sizing cotton. But for very light sorts, locust bean flour, that’s the best.
Aye. That’s gum Tragacanth isn’t it. That’s what you were on about,
R- Gum Tragacanth yes.
Aye. Well, now we've come to the end of the first section of pictures which more or less gives us a look round the tape room. And the next picture we come on to is the first in the set which deals with cutting a set out, cutting an old set out and gaiting the tape again. So the sensible thing I think, is to leave it now and start the next tape at the beginning of cutting out and gaiting and then we don't get a break in between.
R- Aye. Righto.
So we'll call it a do for today Horace. Thank you very much.
SCG/03 April 2003
6,298 words.