THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON THE 21st OF JULY 1979 AT 16 COWGILL STREET, EARBY. THE INFORMANT IS HORACE THORNTON, TAPER AND THE INTERVIEWER IS STANLEY GRAHAM.
And we are carrying on. This is the fourth tape in the series describing the taping pictures in the Bancroft folio and we are carrying on with this tape from picture number 54 which continues the gaiting up process.
R- Well, he’s run the sheet through and dropped it into the raddle and got it set as he wants. He’ll go round to the back and he puts splitting bands in. Then you run the sheet through the sizing, it’s all stuck together in a sheet like paper. So you’ve to put them splitting bands in, you’ve to put one between every two beams. If you have, if you’ve seven beams in you’ll just put six bands in and then you run them through to the front of the tape, and picture 55 shows them running the bands through.
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He’s just running the bands through.
They are just running the bands through and Joe’s…
R- He is twining down, he's putting the immersion roller down into the…
He was just getting ready to drop the immersion roller.
R- Yes, that’s what he were doing.
But I think where Joe’s bent down, on 55, he’s just on with the steam. I think he is just on with the steam down there.
R- Yes, putting the steam on, yes he’ll be boiling up and just getting it nicely bubbling over, because it’s no good putting your roller down if the size isn't boiling, it’d come through like porridge. He is boiling up there. And then the labourer is just watching this size and watching the splitting bands coming through. Sometimes if you weren’t watching they’d get fast on the side, get fast round this roller. If the bands were too long they’d get fast round the pike on the end of these tin rollers and then pull one out and then you’ve to start all afresh. But you can see here, he’s boiling up by the turning on all the steam.
Aye, it in. On 56…
R- On picture 56 is boiling up, because there you can see all the steam rising. And then he has to run the bands through to the front. It shows Joe just watching them through.
He is. He’s just putting his immersion roller down there, he is winding it down isn’t he?
R- Yes, and he has dropped the squeeze roller down and he is twining the immersion roller down. That’s to get the yarn into the size.
On 58…
R- On 58 he’s come round to the front and he is just watching the bands come through. Well he is at the first band, it shows on the top of the sheet there.
Aye, now has Jim just put a striking comb in there on 58?
R- And he’s put the striking comb in the back, because if you put them in immediately after the .. but that hasn’t been a splitting band.
No it isn’t a splitting band. You are right.
R- They’ve been straighteners, they were straighteners they were putting in ...
Yes, now, they’ve put two lots in. Now we’d better just get this straight, they’ve put two lots in. The photograph that we showed, them throwing them through, those were the split bands.
R- Yes.
But they always used to put a couple in before [they put the split bands in] now what were they for?
R- Straighteners, yes. Well, it were to get all the ends [straight]at the back, if you put straighteners in it kept all the sheet together, and if they were straight at the back they came through to the front straight. If you didn’t do that they were crossed, they wandered as they were coming through. But you put quite a lot of these here straighteners in, but at Johnsons we had a lot of sticky tape.
Yes, aye.
R- we put two on every beam. Stuck the ends together and as they came through the front they were all stuck in one straight place. And immediately after that you’d put your comb in.
That’s what Jim’s just done there, just as those straighteners have come through he’s dropped the striking comb.
R- Yes and you ran it through to the front and when you got to the front you saw whether it looked all right. There is a handle there that you pulled over and it dropped the bar that the sheet were resting on, and let the ends all drop down into the raddle.
Yes. I think that’s what is happening on 59 as we turn over.
R- Yes, and it’s a fairly good sheet is that. If it's a very light sheet, not many ends in, you have a job to get a good sheet, but if you have a thick sheet they hold one another in place. Now on picture 59 he is just running the striking comb to the front and then Joe's ...
On 60 Joe’s just dropped the sheet, hasn’t he.
R- On 60 he’s dropped the sheet into the raddle.
Yes and then of course they lift that striking comb out of the way. And that ensured that he’s got as near to a good sheet at his
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raddle as he can, before he starts.
R- Yes. They’re coming through here as they have left the back beams. If they’re crossed here they’re crossed for the weaver and the ends get crossed behind the healds and reed and break out. You’ve got to try and get the best sheet you can. But with us, after you had struck like that, if you had 2,000 ends in a warp and you had 250 pins on your raddle, you reckoned up how many ends would go into each dent.
Into a dent. Aye.
R- Into a dent, and if you counted them in like that you had a perfect sheet then. If you had a good comb and a good sheet they were perfect then. And it’s the only way to make it a good weaving proposition is to have everything right in the tape.
That’s it. I think when we get forward you’ll see Joe put them in. I don’t think Joe actually counted them in, I think he did it by eye.
R- No, he’ll just straighten them and what looks a bit thick he’ll thin. They’ve got the warp struck, they’re taking the striking comb out. And now the bands are coming up, the splitting bands.
Aye 61, yes.
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R- On 61. There’s Joe putting the first splitting batten in. That’s the big rod that splits the sheet in two halves. There’ll be seven beams, there’ll be three ends off three beams to the top, and four beams to the bottom. And then each of those four beams are split again, and the three beams are split again. Some tapers believed in splitting a top one and a bottom alternately, others with a thick sheet, they put the big rod in and
then used to put the rods in as if there were two separate sheets.
Yes.
R- You see? You put your big rod there, and then for your bottom sheet you had the rods here, and then for your top sheet you put the rods there. I found that method were the best because if you had any loose ends, any ends broke coming through, got stuck on the beam or broke and come forward, if you had your big rod in here and rodded them in two halves, they would probably come into the right sheet, either the top or the bottom one. If you were getting your ends all wrong, usually if you put the big rod in it would straighten things up. You could always tell where you wanted the rods in, put a band in for the big rod. And when it came here, you just opened the splitting band, and you could see whether you had any
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(10 min)
ends in the bottom sheet that should be in the top, or in the top sheet that should be in the bottom.
I’ve seen Joe do that while they’re running. Half way through a set they’d go and throw a band in, and watch where it came split, where it came through, just lift it as they are here, because in 62 Joe’s got his rod half way through and you can see that ...
R- There, yes.
Yes. And Jim’s got hold of the two halves and he is holding them, trying to hold them above each other so that Joe can follow through with the rod.
R- Follow through. But a particular taper, he’d rod up every two warps.
Aye.
R- Whether it needed it or not. To make a good job. If you were lazy and didn’t feel like it you didn’t but the proper thing to do were to rod up every two warps, and if it were a thick sheet, at the top of every warp.
I’ve never seen it done at Bancroft.
R- Every warp at a particular place, a coloured place, very particular, every warp. But I used to do every two warps. Very light sorts you didn’t, two or three times in a set, that were all you did because you could tell by the amounts of ends that were coming down. If you were having trouble with a beam you rodded up more but with light sorts the same as we had at Johnsons, and running well, you didn’t bother as much, happen two or three times in a set. But anybody that studied the weaver, they tried to make as good a job as they could because whatever’s wrong, it all ended up with the weaver. If it were bad yarn, or bad winding, or bad beaming or bad
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taping, or bad tackling, it all finished up with the weaver. Because everybody else were on a standing wage. But with the weavers, they were on piece work and the harder they worked and less they had to draw. That were the wrong thing about weaving, about piece work. But they were women, men wouldn’t have stuck it all men, they wouldn't have done the job. But I’ll turn back a bit here. Picture 60. On an old fashioned tape the most intricate thing were the change wheel motion.
Yes, down in the bottom right-hand corner, yes.
R- Right hand corner, you can see the teeth shining.
I used to watch it working many a time, with the odd teeth in the wheels and the reversing motion for the clock.
You could set it to any length of warp to mark, any time, to an inch. And it were very simple, you had a tee key, it should be about here, it should be here in a slot, here, the same as a [small box key]
Yes, tee key, yes. That’s it, it's down in a slot on the end of the tape.
R- Yes. Now, there a hole there.
Yes, on the clock.
R- Yes. When you had finished a set and you wanted a different length of warp. If it were only a few inches different, if you wanted a hundred yards of cloth, different yarn and different thickness of weft altered the ...
(400)
And different pick on the looms yes.
R- Yes. Gave a different length of finished cloth.
That’s it. Aye.
R- You see you had to alter the clock here. Well you put this key in there [the hole on the clock face] and undo a nut there. And you put this point back to zero, and you twined [turned]your clock back, down here, you twined it back.
Yes. There is a knob on the face of it, to hold on to, yes.
R- Yes. And you turned round and round till you got to zero and then you started off again. 36, you twined it 36 times, and then you
(15 min)
twined it back, you twined it 36 and then twined on to 54, another one. That gave you a 36-54, that were a yard and a half, weren't it. 36 yards and 54 inches.
Yes. That's 36 and 54 ...
R- 37 and a half yards, you see.
Yes, that’s it. Yes.
R- Or 50 yards. 52 yards you see if you wanted a warp length of 52 yards, for a mark, you couldn’t go to above a hundred. If you wanted a cloth length of hundred yards you’d have to have two marks, to mark twice, mark at 50 yards. You couldn’t go above hundred. You couldn’t go hundred yards and 20 inches. You could go 99 yards and 20 inches, but that was it. It wouldn't give you a hundred yard cloth length because all the take
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up of the weft and …
Yes, and most of the pieces we did, they were marked twice, because of course we were on 100 yard cuts.
R- Yes. Well they couldn’t do a full 100 yards. But I considered that were the most intricate thing about the old fashioned tape.
Yes, they were a grand thing.
R- And a fitter from Howard and Bullough’s…
I’m trying to think whose patent it was. It said on it, somebody's patent, not Hitchin’s…..
R- Yes. Well, Hitchin’s patent.
Hitchon, that were it!
R- Hitchon, and he said that the man who patented that went mad eventually. But it were a [wonderful thing].. I used to study and look at it and the hundreds of times I’ve turned them round, you just did it with your eyes shut. Unscrewed here and then put your clock back to zero. And then when you’ve doffed your warp, put it back to zero again, and then turn this back the two or three .. you know ... turned it back to zero.
Aye, that’s Hitchon's patents.
R- Aye, back to zero, but every taper would have them on.
And of course that clock on the front counted the number of cuts that you have on that warp.
R- Yes, that were it you see, what’s it go to, 20?
I think that goes up to twenty, aye.
R- 20 yes. You see? No, it were all right were that and never went wrong.
Aye. It couldn’t go wrong, unless it broke, because it relied on those hunting teeth in those gears and ...
R- No. Never went wrong. But you could set your clock to, well, say a quarter of an inch
Yes.
R- And if there were anybody getten a warp in the shed and they were coming out short and they were all coming out short they’d say “put a bit more length on” you see. They’re taking up more than they’d reckoned on. That’s on page 60, that’s where the marking ink comes, it strikes.
Aye, on that drag roller in front, that [cloth covered hammer], that marks yes.
R- Yes. And the ink, over the years it corroded it and wore it. And you always .. there, it appeared to be a bad sheet. But there were grooves in this roller here and the ends ran together. You could have altered it if you’d moved your marker, it would move, and move your vessels, it were on a long rod, you could put your vessel anywhere.
Yes.
R- For narrow cloth, you could move your vessel near the middle and you struck there.
But under that hammer, where the hammer strikes, there was a vessel underneath with a pad in, with the ink in wasn’t there.
R- Yes, a wheel.
A wheel yes.
R- And when it struck, when you were working here, off here, this belt worked it, you see that belt there, that worked the
(20 min)
striking motion and it were on that cam there, and when it got to the where it should strike it released it here and it whizzed round, it did that. And this belt pulled it round and the wheel spun round in the ink, you’d always a wet roller. And you could move it anywhere, if you were on broad cloth, and you could move it so that the mark was on the selvedge. Everything were well thought out. There were no problems, of course they had been on the go such a long time and ...
Yes. The result of years and years and years of experiences wasn’t it.
R It was.
Anyway, we’ll go back to, well we can go on to 63. Now 63, Joe's got his rod right the way through and Jim’s just grabbing hold of the end of it isn’t he.
R- Yes. And he puts it into the proper bracket, and pulls the [splitting tape out]
Yes, well, on 64 Joe’s just hooking his end into the bracket, Jim’s got his in and Jim’s just pulling the splitting band out.
R- Yes, he is. That’s the big rod, that’s the heaviest. And this here is a piece of cotton you tied round the striking hammer so it strikes better. Now we go on to 65.
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Aye, 65.
R- And Joe’s just sorting his sheet out. Any thick places he is moving the ends into the thin ends. But it isn’t what I’d call a good sheet isn’t that. A particular manager wouldn’t let you run like that, you’d have to lay them in. And we got paid extra for laying in, they were all extras, counting in, and warps with six and seven thousand ends. You were a few hours you know, counting them all in into one of them.
Yes, well, you wouldn’t have your tape running would you while you were counting them in.
R- You were stopped.
When Joe did that it were running slowly.
R- When it were running slow.
Because if you were going to be on for an hour or two like that, I mean, the amount of cotton that would get wasted would be nobody’s business wouldn’t it. If it were moving.
R- Oh no, that were after you’d gaited up and got your rods in and got all straight. You took your dummy out, cut all this off, or balled it off for tying up band; but this wouldn’t do for a tying band. This was unsized.
That’s it, aye, it’s soft waste that’s coming off there.
R- Yes, unsized that soft waste. But we had to lay everything in, the heavy stuff and the light stuff, it all had to be laid in.
Yes, we’ll come to…
R- Because with bandages, they were all cut off in strips. Well an order might have been cut this way, you’d have thick places and thin places when it were cut off in strips. For instance if you were
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wrapping, if you got bandages that were cut off like that in yard lengths.
Crossing the warp, yes.
R- Crossing the warp. When you came to here and were wrapping somebody’s finger up, there’d be nothing to wrap up with there.
Yes, where there was a bad place in the sheet.
R- And when it was sticking plaster, the plaster would go through there and stick on to the next roll.
Yes. And on 66, he is still laying them in is Joe.
R- Yes, he is straightening his sheet up.
Right.
R- And it shows the hammer for marking the blue marks on the pieces.
Yes. Did they all use blue marks? That were blue at Bancroft.
R- Always. If you had two tapes one had a blue one and one had a red one.
Ah well, at Bancroft there were two tapes, one had a single hammer on and one had a double hammer.
R- Yes. Well the places that I’ve been at, if there were two tapes one’d have red ..
Aye, different colours. Yes.
R- But, and in some place they didn’t mind about the colour, they’d different colour tickets for the warps. One tape would have blue and the other yellow or red.
(25 min)
Yes. Like a warp card.
R- Yes. Now Joe, on 67, it gives you a close-up here. He is still straightening his sheet. You’ll see these that he has in his fingers, there’s three or four ends together there, well he has to thin them out a bit. And eventually he is satisfied as much as you can be satisfied with doing it like this. But I mean, look here, it’s a horrid sheet. Far better counting in, every one accurate.
[You might get the impression from Horace’s commentary that Joe wasn’t scoring many points here! As far as Horace is concerned this is the case but it’s as well to realise that Horace has been working for the best capitalised weaving firm in the area. In addition, Johnsons were weaving for a very particular market, medical fabrics. Joe on the other hand has been working for a rag shop all his life and everything was done to cut costs and get production. This doesn’t mean he is a bad taper, far from it. What it means is that he has been brainwashed into taking the quickest and cheapest way round the job. The bottom line was that with all the faults in the way Bancroft was run, they produced good cloth under bad conditions. Horace’s comments are valuable because they increase our understanding but don’t take his criticisms too seriously.]
And 68 is just a general view of ...
R- The back of the tape, yes.
The sow box when it’s running.
R- When it’s running.
And on there you see, I can’t think why that was, but those are the selvedge ends that are going in there. They’ve got a fair number going in. There’s three, one, two, ah there’s six at each side which is what you were saying before. There’s six going in at each side for the selvedge.
R- Yes. Two, four, six, but I didn’t notice them on the front.
No, well it’s…
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R- It could be a different set.
Well, it could be, that could be a different set. In fact that is a different set, it is a different set.
R- Yes. You see, there’s six running.
Yes. That’s just been put in there because it’s just a nice picture. And it shows all the muck on top of the trunking.
R- Yes, and he’s going at speed there, you can tell, it’s boiling up nicely and the selvedge is going on. When they put a selvedge on, it’s to make the cloth stronger. In the weaving shed, a strong pick cloth, if they hadn’t a selvedge in made of two fold yarn, when it were beating up it would break out you see.
In fact that is definitely earlier, because both those tapes are gaited up, the far tape’s gaited as well. You can see the sheet in the far tape.
R- Yes it is. Yes, you can.
That’s in the days when they were working together, and 69 is an even closer view of the same picture. It's a nice shot is that.
R- This is the size boxy and it gives you all the details here. The first one’s the drop roller, it keeps your warp tensioned. If you have a beam running slack it keeps them tensioned.
Aye, and then the sheet going under the immersion roller which is fully down.
R- And into the size, and then coming up and through the squeeze roller to squeeze the surplus sizing off.
Now, picture number 70. Oh, picture number 70 is just looking through the door ...
R- Into the small cylinder.
Into the cylinder ... yes.
R- The small cylinder. And then it comes round here, and goes over the top and goes over the big cylinder first, and then round the bottom and on to the little cylinder, round and under the little cylinder, and out to the front.
It comes up to the front there, 71. Now then this, 71 was starting the process of doffing a warp. We’ve got the tape running slow. Yes, that's the tee key at the end there for the clock.
R- Changing the clock, yes.
And Joe there, he is doing something that we were just on about he is…
R - Necking in.
Necking in, he is building it up, isn’t he, to get more on that warp.
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R- Yes. You can get a cut on top after they’re full. And if you let them run above the flanges without necking in they’d all fall off at the sides.
That’s it, yes.
R- But there’s one thing about this building a warp up when you’re running them, putting them on to a floor. If you drop them on to a wood floor that's badly worn they are apt to get broken. At Johnsons you had to run nothing over the flanges, it had to be all below the flanges, they wanted no damaged warps.
I know we were always very careful with the warps, and they always used to be put down on either ...
R- Onto the paper.
Well, paper or lino, or we had old sacks lay about, anything just to keep them off the flour for that reason.
R- Yes, but Johnsons were a stone floor, all stone floors, they couldn't be putting them down on the stone floor for weeks. They’d have mildewed.
Yes. Now then, in 74 Joe’s getting his empty beam ready and he is putting his bit of thrum on.
R- He’s putting the band on, we call them, the bands. And this warp’s full, he’s put the press down, you’ve got to put the press down before you start building up or else your press rollers run out at the side which one has done there. That’s why he’s put the press down, but he’ll be still running. And as soon as ever he hears the marker strike, even with his back to it, he’ll turn round and stop the tape and put the comb in.
Well, his striking comb is laid on top of the headstock on 74, it's just laid across there, that’s it there, aye.
R- I always used to stand mine up in that corner there.
Aye, and in 75…
R- Well, in 75 he’s stopped the tape and put the striking comb in.
He never used to actually stop it, he used to leave it running slow all the time, yes?
R- Oh no, leave it going on. Well, if you stop a tape it leaves a line across the warp that’s baked on, where it stops. You should never ever stop a tape, you keep it moving and then it doesn’t bake on. And all
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the time it’s going slow it’s getting burnt is the warp. You’ve to be very quick with the doffing.
He was, was Joe, he was.
R- That's one thing you’ve got to be, you’ve got to strike it and put the guard, that’s a piece of wood with a groove in for the comb..
If we follow on, you see, 75, he just struck it with the comb ... And 76, he’s got his guard underneath.
R- Yes, he is just putting it in and he’ll tie a piece ...
Yes, 77 he is tying it at the far end.
R- Both ends he ties it, and the tape’s running slowly, it's going forward all the time until his comb gets onto they on to the warp.
Yes. On 78 it’s trapped the comb now and he’s…
R- And he is tying it up. And then he stops the tape, undoes a screw at that end, gets his hooks on to the warp and takes the chain off.
Well, on 79 he is taking the chain off but he never used to stop it.
R- No, he used to keep going all the time, you keep hold of the beam, if you didn’t keep hold of the beam and move it forward it would d run back and get fast. Sometimes it did happen, he’d beat you to it.
But on 79 he is taking that drag chain off that puts the drive through to the beam, and he’s lifted this motion up here on 79.
R- That’s the weight, that's the weight on the friction here, he’s turned it back.
Yes, on the friction clutch, yes. And that tape’s just quietly grinding away. And on picture 80…
R- He’s putting the hooks on each side to lift the warp out. On 81 he is lifting the warp out and letting it swing back.
Yes, and as it swings back it rolls over, and it rolls back a little bit, and I think if we look on 82 you'll find that the comb’s come to the top
R- Comb's come to the top, yes.
…of the warp, there it has, aye.
R- But you have to be careful not let it come this way when you cut it off. And you cut them off as quickly as you can, get your empty beam, put it in, put the ...
On the following two he’s doing that, Horace.
R- Yes I see, on 83.
83, he is cutting the second bunch.
R- Yes.
84, he is just spreading them out, He’s put his empty beam in and he’s just spreading them out on the empty beam, the two bunches. Yes, he is just throwing it on, and throwing it sideways. And then we go forward to 85.
R- Yes, he is just fastening the ends of the next warp on with a
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(35 min)
band, we call them bands. He puts it round, ties it in the middle, and then brings it to the end, ties it around again there and then spins the beam round as he is doing on 86. He puts the chain round, the driving chain, he’s got …
Now on 87, he’s got his chain round.
R- Aye. He’s put the chain round, he’s tightened it up. He is putting the weight down to put the friction motion into gear. And then he goes to the other side and sets his tape on and he is altering the raddle, he opens it out till it gets to the edge, and he is feeling at the warp at the same time.
Yes, that’s it. Yes.
R- ... to see if it’s hard or brittle or it’s dried too much and it’s all to be done very quickly.
Aye, we should point out that these last happen, eight pictures are all being done in a matter of seconds. And 89 he is ...
R- Yes, he is opening the raddle out to get it to the very edge, if you don’t get it to the edge quickly you have a soft side here. You've got to get it against the flanges, but you see …
Wait a minute now .. 89, he is setting his clock isn’t he. He is just, his hand’s just going out to set the clock I think there. Isn't it just to put the clock back to zero?
R- Yes, ah yes, he will be. He puts the pointer to zero. Now then, he is ready for off, he’s pulling the handle quietly.
On picture 90.
R- Yes. I was just going to make a remark about something. They went on to, these are aluminium flanges by the look of them.
Yes. Some of them were, but there weren’t many aluminium.
R- But the aluminium flanges; where I worked these here press rollers rubbed them, and it came off black did the aluminium, on to the warp. And that were a deadly sin to have any black in bandages, any grease. So we’d got to give over using presses like that, we got hardwood blocks, right hard wood, lignum vitae is it? Blocks put at each end of these press rollers so that when they rubbed against there, the flanges, there’s nothing rubbed off. But you can imagine steel rubbing against aluminium, it powdered off. They always used to being complaining about black sides you see when they went to the finishers. And they couldn’t get the aluminium dust out. And so we got over it, the managers got over it with putting wood blocks in. Aye, that’s how they altered that problem, but these are iron.
(850)
Some were iron and some were aluminium but mostly iron.
R- Some are, that one looks to be iron by the colour. Yes, but it were for lightness and I supposes cheapness. And then we'd another big fault. When they put the automatic looms in they all had these big flanges, 26” flanges, right big heavy beams. They were steel barrels and the flanges had been pressed out.
That’s it.
R- Stamped out. But they were all saucered. You put a rule or straight edge across from here to here.
Yes, and they were dished.
R- They were dished. They were all dished, and you could not get your selvedge up to the side. You had to run with your finger in here to try and get it tight but you couldn’t. They were always complaining about soft sides. And if you wind it out that much to build them up to the edge, open the raddle like that to build them up to the edge, if you weren’t noticing, when you got further up the sides were built up.
That’s it, yes, as the dish came in, yes.
R- Yes. And the warps all had slack sides.
They want to be parallel don’t they. Yes.
R- Yes. So they scrapped all them and got a fresh lot of beams with aluminium barrels, perfect they were, perfect everywhere. There were not no having to flange beams or anything they were perfect them. The flange worked on like a cog affair, you can twine them round and narrow them in and then tighten the lock nut up and they were stuck there positive and a perfect flange, and that cured that job. But they were a firm that would spend money any time if as long as it were to cure a fault. There were no messing about with bits of string and brown paper and that sort of thing.
God, ours were full of beam wedges.
(900)
(40 min)
R- Yes, well (at Johnsons] if you needed anything [to increase production] you got it.
Picture 91.
R- He is running now, he’ll be at full speed and he puts his press down, and them press rollers don’t go out on their own, not always. When they won’t go out on their own, when the beam’s nearly empty you’ve to push them out with the foot and Joe’s doing that. He’s pushing that out and then he'll push that out and these rods underneath, these pulleys will keep them ..
Keep them pushed out, yes.
R- He’ll keep them pushed out all the time.
We’re on 92 he has got his hand in again.
R- Yes. He is feeling if the warp’s all right, you tell whether it’s too harsh or damp or soft, you can all tell by the feel. And the warp’s still here, he hasn’t had time to ...
No, we get on to that in a second. Now, 93 is a picture of the friction side, there. The friction drive to the warp. Because the thing that governs the speed of the tape is the drag roller which is the cotton covered roller, the big cotton covered roller you can see. Obviously, the diameter of the warp’s changing all the time, so that doesn’t drive at, that hasn’t got to drive at a constant speed. It’s actually slowing down all the time.
R- It’s slowing down all the time as they get more weight on here. All the time you’ve got to be digging your fingers at it to feel if your warp’s tight enough. If it isn’t firm enough you have to move this big weight on.
That big weight on the left hand-side of that picture. Yes.
R- Yes, on the left hand-side. You moved it on, this is the least weight on at this end, and you moved it on there till you got more weight on. And when you got to the top of the warp and you had doffed the warp, you pushed that weight back to this end, take all the weight off. And in here there’s thin steel sheets, plates and flannels.
Flannel discs.
R- Flannel discs just the same size.
It’s like a multi-plate clutch, steel and flannel.
R- Yes it is. But there will be the outside plate and a flannel and then a thin steel plate next and then a flannel then another thin steel plate, a flannel and the inside plate. And then it’s the same at that side. But on big tapes they have a double clutch. If you’ve 68” beams you can put another clutch into gear. You turn the handle over and you have a double clutch then. But for light cloth you’ve to run with a single clutch or else if you’ve double clutch it’ll break the warp out. And this roller here…
(950).
The front shiny roller that’s just after the warp?
R- No, that cloth covered roller.
Oh, the drag roller, yes.
R- The drag roller. If you get a heavy sort in, you can make it dry better with putting more cotton round here, it pulls it tighter to the cylinders. If you are not drying so well, build that up two or three rounds of cotton on, and you’ll find out they dry a lot better. But there is a limit to what you can do, the tension you are putting on it. The more tension you’re putting on, you are taking it out of the yarn. But thick stuff, I used to run a lot of fives for lints and I used to put a thick flannel on there to tighten up. It was the only way you could dry them. And there’s a place just down here where you can change your wheels.
Aye, at the far side of the, on the left hand-side of the headstock there. Yes.
R- Yes, just there. You can change the wheels and I used to change on to a wheel, I don’t know, it might have eight teeth on the lowest wheel I’ve had. It was only the same as a ring with teeth on, that were for lints, for going the slowest of all. And your cone rollers, first thing of the morning to be right down at the bottom, and when you get the heat up and everything on, the safety valve blowing off, you might get a foot up the coned roller.
I think it’s a good time to mention that when we are talking about the safety valve blowing off, that didn’t mean that we had 80 or 160 pounds on the cylinders.
R- Ten pounds.
Ten pounds were the maximum. Yes.
R- Ten pounds were the maximum. But they will stand a lot more.
Well, yes.
R- Because I know lots of tapers used to weight them.
Ah well of course, the more modern valves, you couldn’t weight them because they were enclosed weren’t they for that reason ...
R- Yes, they were.
There were too many accidents with tapes, doing this.
R- Yes, they used to weight them.
Picture 94 is probably the last one we’ll do on this tape, and that’s just a nice general shot of Joe after he has got everything running.
R- Running, yes.
He’s got his new warp going. He is just laying an odd one in that he isn’t quite satisfied about.
R- There’s a knot or dawn or something…
Aye, a bit of dawn coming down. Yes.
R- ... dropped in. It might be a big snarl that’s come through on the warp. And if one of those, if a big snarl gets fast in these pins, if you're not watching, you’ll have a gather up as big as a bird’s nest.
(1000)
(45 min)
Aye, that’s it. Yes.
R- But you don’t get many of those.
Ah, 95, that’s the last picture I wanted to do for this one. It’s just a nice picture of the headstock. You can see the press and the sheet coming over, round the drag roller and the cotton covered drag roller.
R- But this is the set that has the side ends in. There’s six on each side.
Yes, that’s it.
R- You see they’ve brought them over the top of the spinner back there, and over this big rod, one, two, three, four, five rod. Well, this is a different set.
Yes, that’s it.
R- The one where they were putting seven beams in.
That’s it. It’s just a nice picture of what’s going on.
R- Yes. They are all good photographs. But there’s always this mark where the ink has corroded the roller.
Aye. That black mark down there.
R- Yes, it’s always there.
Like a thin shop on the sheet.
R- Yes, a thin shop. And you can’t get it out. And if you try to rub it with a bit of emery paper, run the tape empty, it only makes a hollow spot and makes it worse. It’s surprising how the ends cut in there, with being wet and the ink on.
Aye. Anyway, that brings us, we’ll stop there with this tape because that brings us on to the last section of the taping where he is just getting rid of the full beam, so I’ll stop this tape here.
R- Yes.
SCG/05 April 2003
7,016 words.