THIS TAPE HAS BEEN RECORDED ON MAY 26TH 1980 AT 119 BURY ROAD, HASLINGDEN. THE INFORMANT IS ROLAND TAYLOR, JUMBO OPERATOR AT SPRING VALE MILL. THE INTERVIEWER IS MARY HUNTER.
1 think last time 1 was here Roland we were still talking about the way the rollers ...
R- Cylinders.
Cylinders. I beg your pardon, cylinders were made up in the devil, on the devils. So 12.14 perhaps if we start tonight.
R - Now that In a main drive motor for the devils. As you can probably see, they don’t make them like that any more, probably lucky too now they’re shutting. Let’s see now, eh, the box you can see on your left hand-side of the picture, that's the starter switch. We can't actually see, oh yes you can, there’s like a knob on top of the box and next to that there's like a lever. Well that's the one you lift up, and on your right hand-side of the big motor you can see like a red flag on there. Well that has two positions, where it is now is when it's ready to start it. On the front facing the other starting box. And the round box on the left hand side on the floor, can you see a bit of a knob on the top of that? You press that down and there is a handle at the
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side that you wind. And there is a clock which you can’t see on this photograph, right in the top corner which shows your amps as you're starting it up. Now it you wind it up too fast it’ll knock off and you’ll have to start all over again. You can only, start it up at with your amps at a certain level, if you go too high you are going too fast for your motor to start up proper and it will knock off. So you've got to do it at a certain speed, it’s not a matter of turning a switch and it’s running, it's got to be wound out. That’s why it takes so long to stop as well. And once you’ve got it up to your speed there’s like a little switch on this small, round box.
In the middle?
R- And there’s a hook on, you know, the one on the floor here. There’s a hook on this part on the top and when it winds on the hook moves round until it clicks on that catch and holds it in that position for running. It won’t start on run because it takes too much power to start, you’ve to wind it up to that power. Not much more you can say about that.
And that’s merely to start?
R- That's merely just to start the motor before you can even set your devils on. And just to knock it off even and easy you’ve got switches outside but if you happen to be in here you just knock the button down on the square box on the left.
What sort of power are we talking about?
[The Cotton Year Book gives a figure of 8hp per cylinder. I have it in the back of my mind that the motor which drove the devils was 150hp and this matches the Year Book figure, 18 cylinders at 8hp is 128hp. It’s almost certain that the motor would be over-sized so 150hp will be about right. The running load would be about 200 amperes.]
R- I’m not sure now exactly but, well you can go off the thing they say now it'll cost £15 to start it. Well that takes a bit of power if it takes you £15 worth of money to start that motor up, that's why they don’t
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want to knock it off once you’ve set it on. But sometime you .. if you, if you've
been on holiday, like you've had your July break and you come back, some of your ropes, like I've described the ropes earlier on, they get slack with them not running, or if you’ve a change of weather and all. Well if it’s set on .. again if you try and start really too fast, like you can go, start off at, the fastest speed if you know how to do it and by watching that clock you can get it off to a fine art how quick you can get it going. Like .. with such as me and the other lads, we've, we got paid, see there were a clock there that said how many hours them devils were running, it doesn't say when the machines are actually turning cotton out, just how long they are running. So the sooner you started, your time started from then and you don't want to be hanging about waiting five minutes starting the devils up. But if you were too fast, and after a holiday, you might fling your ropes off your, off your devils. And you have to stop then and wait for your devils stopping and then put ‘em back and they're not the easiest things to put back on when they’ve been flung off. Also if you happen to be in the way they can give you a nasty wallop, because they are fairly shifting when they throw ‘em across the devil hole. And that's really all that's about, in fact the last six months that clock hasn't worked so we haven't bothered with it, there is no need to bother about what time you started it up. But it's really for the office staff to know how much production you've got for how many hours it's run rather than for anybody else's convenience and also it told you how many units of electric it's used in a week
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and there is a clock for that as well. And that can fairly knock on in a week. I know it's doing four and five hundred units a week which is a hell of a lot of money if you've got to pay for it. Like can you imagine in your house you’re only doing, what do they say? About 50 units in a quarter of that big units.
Is that right?
R - You can imagine what 500 a week's going through.
And this is all…
R – For the amount of power that it takes to start you can keep they say a house and all its lighting, its cooking and its central heating just for starting that. It'd last a fortnight for any house, just to start it up. As I say they don't make motors like that any more. Once it broke you’d have to go on single motors on each devil.
And this is in the little room off the side of the devils isn’t it.
R- Yes, on the left hand side. Yes that's the room off on the left hand-side of the devil hole. There’s nothing more I can say about that.
Right, well number 13 then.
R- Well that’s a small single devil at the far end of the devil hole. And you've got a fire there, you can see they’ve opened the door at the back of the single devil to put the water in. So it runs on the cylinder which is where your fire is. They are doing it wrong and all, they haven't switched it over, that do you see?
What do you mean, they haven’t switched it over?
R - Well there’s like a connection, you can’t see it on here, they have another trunking that runs off about half way and it goes across the room into another
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well, we call them a side end machine. I’ll show you later on.
Oh yes, I know which you mean.
R- But it runs all to one that isn’t in use. If you pull .. like there is a lever here and it cuts that off and opens the other trunking up so it stops if there is a fire coming through there, it stops it coming into where you’ve got all your cotton. It’ll go into the one that’s not being used therefore you are not going to have a fire in some that you are using. There is nothing else you can really say about that.
How often did fires take place?
R- It all depends on the stuff you are using. If it's good stuff it’s very rare to have a fire. Well, if you get a fine cotton that’s always liable to fire, cause it’s a lower flash point. And a single devil like that isn’t normally a danger unless your pushing it to try to get finished. If you’ve got a certain amount to do, get that done and you have enough. If you start pushing it you are liable to overfeed it, you’re getting too much going through and it builds up the heat that way. And it only needs a bit of a, what shall we say, a rolled ball of cotton and that will fire it. It was the same what, last few weeks before they finished we were doing one or two bales that are really rough bales, they’re like rolled balls of cotton and it doesn’t really open, you can’t pull them out before it goes through, you’ve got to [let them go] You’ve got to put a right thin feed on and we are not used to putting thin feeds on. Most times it’ll go through but occasionally it’ll build up and then fires. You are away then. And the worst thing about these single devils is you don’t actually smell it till it’s afire. Like your big devils you can normally smell it before it fires and you can control it that way. You can get to where the smell is and put it out before it actually fires. But this one, you actually get your fire almost at the same time that you smell it. Now, number 14….
(250)(10 min)
Hang on, before you go on. What was the management’s attitude to the number of fires that happened?
R- Well, we’d cut down on fires a lot in this last two years. We used to be averaging three or four fires a day. Well the last two years they got, well if we had three or four fires a week that were on the top side. In fact we went once for six months without a fire at all.
Really?
R- And what it is, they know it happens, you can’t really avoid fire , just sometimes you get more than others. A lot depends on your jumbo, if I’m rushing it on there when it gets down here there’s a tendency for it to fire. But if I’m like in a bad mood I’d run it through me jumbo and if him in the devil hole were in the same mood and he’d give us like… When it got into the devil hole, by rights, if there were any lumps in it you should throw them out. But you got, especially since they put them guards on, where it’s made it harder work, it got so ‘Whose bothered about them lumps’ and away they went. Well most of the time they went through but occasionally, in fact when you put the lumps in you were watching that devil because you had an idea that’s where your fire could be. So you caught them before they fired, you knew where they were going to come if they were going to fire with what you’d put on. So your usually waiting for it, you got a smell, you stopped, clean it out and set it on again and you were away, it didn’t fire. Now if they counted them they’d say there had been hundreds of fires rather than none. But with catching them like that you were only losing a minute or two, well they weren’t bothered about that. If you have an actual fire you can lose what? Depending on how big your fire was you can be stopped for an hour or two while you are cleaning up after it. Now if you get water all over you’ve to dry it out as well.
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But presumably the management accept that if you’ve got devils in a firm then you’re going to have fires. Yes?
R – You’ve got fire risk That's why the insurance men were always here. The devils are a fire risk at any time.
Do you think it’s a certain sort of bloke that works in a devil room or do you just become so used to them that they don’t represent a hazard to you at all?
R- I suppose you can. We got used to having fires, you didn't bother. People would say “You’ve got a fire there!” and this lot would say “What are you worried about? You are used to them!” Like I say, I’ve been there fifteen years and we’ve only had the fire brigade twice and yet we’ve had a hell of a lot of fires and some of them a fair size. Like I said, when the firemen came that time with us they said we did well keeping it there, even they wouldn’t have kept it under control like we did. It’s being used to handling fires, like a lot of people are frightened of fire. If you are frightened of fire you’d be no use in here. Like one of the blokes in that photograph, well Ill tell you when we get to the photograph. When he first went in there we used to laugh at him if you got a fire. He’d be going round in a circle, literally going round in a circle not knowing what to do first. It were laughable to watch him, he’d literally go round in a circle wondering what to do first. But he got in the end he were running only you see he knew what to do straight away, he did the job. But when he first went in it were laughable, we used to say to him “Are you doing a dance?” Only he were just going round, he’d never move, walking round, not moving off the spot. In fact we had a big fire once through us all laughing at him instead of going to the fire.
It's not funny really though is it?
R- In fact we even laughed afterwards. I think it cost us two hours did that because it shot across one set to the devil, to the row of devils that were going and we were still laughing when we were putting the fire out.
Now then Roland, I don’t know. Yes, all right I’ll let you go on to number 14 now.
(350)(15 min)
R- Well them are the side ends, not the ones off the single devil, they are the ones that come from the card room, they are off them cards of Glenys’s the first lot of finisher cards. They take the waste cotton away from there and they come into you mainly because it can be mixed in with our devil cotton because it’s not bad stuff, it hasn’t really been broken up that much and it can go in with the devil cotton.
Now those are the two side ends of the finisher cards. Is it sucked off?
R- Yes.
And then they travel on the right hand, on that underground trunking? To there? And then they go through one cylinder like the devils but one cylinder just to be mashed up again. Is that right?
R- No.
I mean I know mashed up isn’t the word I should use.
R- No, like them aren’t touched at all once they come through them pipes, they go , they just come through those cages to be…
Made into a lap?
R- No. Yes, just pushed together so it doesn’t come through like a lure like it is on that picture there.
Like a what?
R- A lure.
L U R?
R- Instead of being what should I say? Blown out in fluff which it could be without them cages.
Now I would call that a lap but obviously you are not calling it a lap.
R- No, a lap in carding is when you've got a roll off it.
Right.
R- And then what you call laps, now you could make a lap out of it if you rolled it up into a roll.
But it's just being fed into that right?
R- But it’s just being dropped into the box and then going to the chute ready for going up into the devil box.
And then it’s going to he blended with all the other?
R- Yes, they’ll be mixed in with the devils. As long as it’s not for sale. If it’s sale then it won’t go in. It’s only used for our own stuff.
Right. And I gather you are not committing yourself to the spelling of the word ‘lure’? No? Right.
R- No, I never were the greatest speller in the world.
Well, it’s probably a word that you’ve all dreamt up at some time and probably nobody knows how to spell it properly so don't worry about it. And those are in the devil room aren't they?
R- Yes they are at the back of the single devil underneath the steps.
And it’s just two of those?
R- yes there are just two of them. The switches for them are on the wall on the left hand side there. They just run off two small motors that actually run them. Surprising, you wouldn’t think, but the suction for them is a big motor in the card room. These motors are just to turn the cages there so that it runs out into the boxes. And the actual fan is in the card room, the fan that draws them and then pushes it into single devil
Oh I see. That’s presumably a spike through…
R- No, that’s just a grill, a cage.
The what?
R- Grilled cages.
Right.
R- They’re just like a mesh on them and the cotton comes down, pushes into them. The cage pushes the cotton together into what you think is a lap, for it’s all fluffed up when it actually comes in there but it’s no good having it blowing all over the place. One thing it’d be damned hard work sweeping it all up.
Right.
R- So it pushes it together in say like a solid mass.
Right. OK. That’s fine. Now 14.01.
R- Well that is a single devil where, in fact you can see the two side ends behind it that we were just talking about. And that’s like a, well as the name says, it’s a small version of your devils. Your devils have six cylinders but this only has one. The stuff that goes through it doesn’t need the breaking that your big machines would give it. It’d spoil it if you put it through the big devils but it isn’t good enough to go straight into your mixing, it wants opening a little bit. So your single devil’s used for opening it just a small amount. Not so much that you can describe, it’s almost exactly the same as what you get on the big devil, they’re on the same principle as your big devils. Your feed lattice is the same apart from, like you saw in the picture of the back of this one, instead of it going up the lattice at the back of the devils this one goes through a trunking because it hasn’t normally, if we are on our own stuff and we are making sale. The main devils could be running sale, making sale cotton. Well that from our single devil never went into the sale cotton, we always used it ourselves because it wasn’t good enough really for sale. Well, I wouldn’t think so with some of the stuff we used to get but they considered that not good enough for sale stuff, they wanted the best stuff in the sale. So that used to be going to the box and then being bagged up. When you had got enough, like I mean either four or five bags depending how big the bags were, when you got enough you took it upstairs and made a bale like you would do your devil cotton.
(450)(20 min)
And then it was used in the blending process?
R- Yes, that were used in the blending. Yes.
And what sort of stuff was normally fed through those?
R - Well what we call rovings.
Yes, I know what you mean I think.
R- But would somebody else who’ll listen in a hundred years, will they? Eh, I can’t think what rovings off.
No they won't, good point, telling me my job now aren’t you Roland! You are getting so good at it eh? What about things like the piked cotton of the bobbins from…
R- nearest I can tell you what it is, when you’ve seen your finishing cards that Glenys were on, you see the waste she had on the floor when she piked her bobbins off, well that can be classed as rovings because it hasn’t been spun yet so it’s still soft. Now your thread waste, your hard stuff, is like when it’s been spun and is highly, it’s been twisted and it wants more breaking up does that. Now your rovings are before it has been spun and it’s still soft. And you know it’s, what shall we say, it’s like cotton wool but it’s in a thread. That’s about as near as I can say what it is. It’s soft in other words.
Did you put on to that single devil things like the, the piked bobbin waste?
R- Yes, we used to run our own waste off our finisher cards on it.
Yes. So invariably it would he fed with cotton that has partly gone through the process at Spring Vale.
R- Yes. Well all of it and even the rovings we bought that had been partly processed in other mills besides ours.
Yes, right.
R- But it’s all soft waste where your main material were hard waste.
Yes.
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R- Which needed a lot more opening up. With your soft waste all you really wanted was like fluffing up.
That’s right, which is why it only has one cylinder. Very good.
R- Tea break.
Picture number 14.02.
R- It makes it awkward.
Yes, I know.
R- Well that one's, in fact it's dinner time. I bet you kind of want to know how I can tell it’s dinner time and not lunch time.
Well, I was just going to ask you actually to say what you call all the mealtimes because I think that’s interesting actually.
R- Well I know because I know what they have for their dinner but the main thing is if it were tea break them devils wouldn’t be stopped, they’d be having their brew while they were running. Now to see them actually sat down means it’s dinner time, they are not running. Like even when they were running dinner times the they used to stop for about quarter of an hour for their dinner. In fact you can see, if he’s a plate there it means it’s dinner time ‘cause usually if he had his lunch break, if he had owt it were only toast and he didn’t need a plate for that. But while it were lunch break the devils didn’t stop so you wouldn’t see him sat on it, it’d be taking him through and all. But dinner time they used to, if they were running dinner time they only used to stop for a quarter of an hour while they had their dinners and it’s time they swept up too. If Johnny were there we’d have got cursed for that.
Sorry?
R- Johnny were the mill manager and you got cursed for having it all over the floor while you were eating.
Yes well, true. Now am I right in remembering that lunch time was the break you had at ten o’clockish, half past nine or whenever it was.
R- Eight o’clock.
Oh I beg your pardon, eight o’clock in the morning.
R- Don’t mention that one, it’s not an official one.
Oh so eight o’clock , where you…
R - Between, eight and half past.
Where you’d have a sort of cross between a lunch and a breakfast.
(25 min)
R - A breakfast, that’s what it’d be, really most people if they didn’t have breakfast when they came to work would have it then.
A breakfast. Because you started at half past seven didn’t you?
R - We used to start at half six, that’s why we were ready for ours at eight o’clock.
And than at dinner time which was twelve o’clock you had a normal meal. Yes?
R- Yes. And you were also, most of the devils used to run all dinner time apart from, as I said, a quarter of an hour that they used to…well, in fact most of the time they didn’t have the quarter of an hour, but normally ten minutes, quarter of an hour they had for their dinner and then the devils’d be set on again. They took it in turns, like somebody’d come on at half past twelve to run the other, the second half.
But they were on piece time weren’t they?
R- What do you mean by piece time?
Well, like the spinners.
R- No, they weren’t on piece work, we’d break them if they put us on piece work. No. just ordinary day work we were on. And you know I was telling you about the bloke who used to do the dance? Well that’s the bloke sat on the lattice now, he always used to be doing a dance when he’d first come in.
Did he?
R- But with working there he got used to it and got into the habit, but when he first went in he always used to go round in a circle.
Good for Billy.
R- I don’t think there is much else you can say about that.
How long officially did you have for each break? officially.
R - Officially ten minutes.
Even at dinner time? I mean?
R- At dinner time you, officially it were 55 minutes because you went at twenty five past four(?) not at half past. That's where your five minutes went from otherwise you'd had an hour, officially that were. Got a bit lax when they started shutting, more so. In fact nobody were particularly bothered what they thought then. ‘Cause you can’t, you see it were ‘You can’t sack us now.’
What about lunch time?
R – Well. It should have been ten minutes.
Is that all?
R – Yes. That’s all it should have been. In fact they put it up enough times on the notice board but even, last couple of years we didn’t take much notice of ‘em because workers were getting scarce. You weren't getting the workers coming into cotton so you got near enough to finger thing to the management, you can't got anybody to replace us so shut up your remarks. [‘V’ sign?]
Yes I gathered from Mary in the canteen that your lunch time was usually an hour, and five minutes would be put in, nipped in at the end.
R – No. It weren't actually that. I used to get me chips and go into, I used to go down to the Social Club then for a game of snooker at dinner time and when I came back it were time for, we only used to have one game of snooker, and when I'd come back it used to be five to one when we should have been starting, well I went in for me
sweet then. And there used to be one or two .. what should 1 say? I should say
jealous people more than owt else who used to moan. It's like Roy, he says to her “Take no notice” and there was more than one got on to Roy about the time 1 spent in the canteen.
Really?
R - And they’ve gone, in fact they’ve gone on to David Hardman and all.
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But it’s like David says, “I’ve worked with you, I know how long you spent in the canteen because you used to do it while I was here. Like I spent half an hour in the canteen even when he were going through the mill with me, and he were one of the directors. He said “But what they don’t see , and I worked with you, while you had me with you, before we went in that canteen the sweat rolled off me. I’ve never sweat like that since I finished with you. When you’ve had that half hour you’ve done more than they’ll probably do all day before you had that break.” And Roy said that he listened and then let it go in [one ear and out the other] and then ta-ta and took no notice of it. It was like Roy was saying, a couple of months before he finished, he says “I know you work better than most of them, but have your ten minutes like them and then go somewhere else and have the rest of your time where they can’t see you. If they can’t see you they don’t know how long you’re having.”
That’s right.
R- He says “What they are not thinking about is how many times they go out for a smoke and you don’t smoke.” And a lot of them they’d, most of the morning they’d be out for a smoke every half an hour. Well, it were five or ten minutes every half an hour. Anyway, we are going off the subject I think.
It's all right, we keep doing that. Picture number 15.
R – Aye. I wonder where he took the rest of them and all, he took more than that. [Roland is quite right and it’s worth pointing out that there are many more pictures in the Spinning Archive than the ones that are in the folio used for the interviews] But that’s the finished product on the press. It doesn't even show the part where it actually goes in like. It’s made up really of two boxes like that one, the other one’s on the right hand-side behind the door, you can’t see. Well that side’s where your cotton comes from upstairs into your press. And there’s a clock again on the right hand-side
(30 min)(650)
which again he took photographs of. I don’t know what happened to the photographs but there’s a clock there, you set it for how many trans, we call them trans, and he puts so much in and he presses it down. Like with our own heavier comber stuff you only put about eight or nine trans in. Well you've got your sale stuff, that’s all soft so you put 18 or 24 in, that again depends on, like 18 if it were our own which had soap on because that all added to the weight, or 24 if you’re making for sale when it had no soap on and you could press it down more. Now these ones, after you’d got your amount of cotton in your, sounds like a, what shall I say, well it swings round like it is on hinges , the whole lot swings round and you get this one swinging round into the other side ready to fill up again, and your bale, like this one, comes to this side where you put your wires through. Well you can see the gaps there, at the top there where you can put your wires through and the same at the bottom. There’s gaps made in your press where you can put your wires through. And then you put the truck at the side there where the, Roy’s stood there, trust Roy to be stood there doing nothing. And after you’ve finished wiring it up, there’s a button on your left hand side here, you can just about see, about what, about half an inch off the top of the picture. There is three buttons there, there is a stop button, there is an up button and there is a down button. You want your down for pressing it when it gets into this side while you wire it up. And your up button is ready to release it so you can push it on to your truck. And like the lever on the frame, on the left hand side of the picture, that’s for when you’ve spun your bales round, that holds it in place. If that wasn’t in it’d just start turning, you’d have stopped because there are contacts on the press and if your contacts aren’t touching it’ll stop your press, it wouldn’t work. It’s got to be in there for your, either side, to feed in. If you don’t put your … in again you can’t really wire it up if it’s moving around anyway. There’s nothing else, the tares on the left are what you put over the top of the cotton, and when you’ve taken your bale out you put one on your bottom ready for your cotton falling on to it, you’ve got two, both sides of your bale. And at the left, at the back of it you can just see the wires as they are ready to wire up, and I think that’s it on there.
You use the word ‘tare’ for the sacking don’t you?
R- Yes.
And then I’m right in thinking that number 15 in fact marks the end of the blending process?
R- Yes.
When it gets to there all the various blending processes have been done?
R- Yes.
So the process that happens immediately after that, or at least when it comes back out of the warehouse, is scutching. Now that is not called a blending process then?
R – No, the scutcher isn’t, no.
It's one on its own then. It must be.
R- It is really. Scutching is, then again though, even there, on the scutcher is really blending to a certain degree. Because you mix your bales up as you put them on your scutcher. Even them bales are all mixed, you don’t just use one bale at a time, you put four down and a bit of each one at a time it’s really being blended all the way through the line. But it’s actually the end of what they consider to be the blending part of it.
(700)
Do you know if other firms using similar methods to Spring Vale would have a scutcher as well?
R- Oh aye. Nearly any cotton mill has a scutcher.
It does? So it is…
R- It’s just that they don’t have any blenders. Most of the others actually mix your bales on the scutcher.
Is that right?
R- Yes, they used to put a lot of different bales behind the scutcher and they’d have like our hopper behind the scutchers and they used to feed the hopper and the hopper used to mix in on to your lattice for the scutchers.
I see. So that’s there or four is it? Four blending machines that [gap in transcript] slightly different aspects.
R- We are different than most other mills yes.
Oh, that’s interesting. Now in picture 15.01…
R- Well, that’s your bale warehouse with your bales off your press are. Your devil bales are taken in there. Your ordinary comber ones are put in a smaller warehouse because they go back on to the scutchers when they don’t vent to be wheeling miles round the mill just to, when you are going back again. And there you've got your two sorts and all, you’ve got your… These with no tares down the side are odds on being our own. I refuse to say how bales are like that but there’s a good chance they are our own. But your ones with the tares on the side them are definitely for going abroad. Them go to Switzerland in fact, them with the tares on, or should have been.
(35 min)
To what? Do you know?
R - To a cotton mill in Switzerland. I don't know what they actually do. I think they were finding it cheaper to buy our broken cotton than what it were to buy comber. Only these have them as, what should I say. On a string I wonder. In fact they didn’t get them if I remember right, they sold them to someone else, fed up of being on the lead. See, they come in with an order and then really use our storage. It could be months later before they came to take them.
Was there any particular length of time that the bale had to be to stored?
R- No. No particular length of time. In fact they were going out almost as soon as we made them were them sale bales.
So the emphasis on conditioning isn't really correct?
R - Not, not for theme sale ones. Lie how long they used to keep them after they’ gone I don’t know, but our own comber bale hadn’t to be used the same day, they’ to be left at least one day preferably two to gather up moisture what they’d lost going through the process.
(750)
And that would be gathered from the oil and water, oil and soap?
R- Just out of the air, they’re gathering moisture out of the air. Like really the main reason for that actually, like when you have pressed it and you’ve put it behind the scutcher, if you put one behind and you’ve only just done it and you undo it, with it having gathered moisture and been left, it literally springs right up. You are likely to get it all over the floor. In fact they’ve gone in before today by accident and they can double the size. Like we've got it about 4ft high, they'll spring to about 8 or 10 ft. Well there is no way you can handle one that’s up to the ceiling. I think that’s your lot on that.
Now we’ve moved to number 24, having missed out the scutching process and Roland’s going to tell us about the breaker cards. So, number 24.
R- Well that’ one’s, as you say, one of the breaker cards. Well they make cans [of roving] for the Derby Doubler, the one that Charlie’s on there, and he is just breaking the end of a lap, getting ready to take a roller off, they are on rollers or shells them laps, I’m not sure which they are, I think they must be shells.
What’s the difference Roland?
R- Well, the ones on the, well they are shells now that I mention it, they are on, the breaker cards have shells [in the laps that have] come off the scutchers. Now your finisher cards have the laps that come off the doubler. Now they run on wooden rollers, probably because they don’t break same as shells would, you keep dropping them into the Derby Doubler and they’re liable to beak. And if you’re getting them, with them being metal if they crack you are liable to trap your fingers in them. It doesn’t matter so much with the scutcher because there is an iron rod through them so you don’t actually pick the shell up, where in the doubler you actually pick it out. Anyway, we are going off the subject going on to the Doubler now. But these breakers, the laps come off the scutchers to feed ‘em and the laps on the finisher cards come off the Derby Doubler.
(40 min)(800)
And this is the feed end of the breaker cards isn’t it?
R- Yes, that’s the feed end. And when we get near the bottom of the shell there’s like a lot of cotton trailing off and there’s more on it than, if you get too much on your card it’s liable to , well, it means that you have to grind a lot sooner and grinding is what you don’t want to more than you have to.
Grinding being the setting of the breaker cards?
R- Meaning taking everything down and cleaning it all. 25 shows it better, he’s actually taken the shell off on 25 and he’s breaking it level. It does that so when you, and then tuck it under when it’s going through this other one. So when it gets, when the lure gets level with this other lap that’s in front of it he’ll pull that one back and put his new lap there. So you’ve always got the one that’s running out at the back you don’t want to be pulling one from the middle of your card when it’s running out. So when that lure gets level with that lap in front he’ll pull that back and he’ll put his new lap in the front there. And there's a rod goes through the shell. In fact you can just see the rod there, on that one in front, it goes right through the shell and out the other end to stop it moving forward or back and a mess if it does and all. Well that’s what the rod's in for, to stop them moving. You don’t really need one on the back, ‘cause with your lattices there’s like gap in it, it fits in nicely does that one but there isn’t one in the middle of the lattice.
And what sort of process is going on there?
R- Really it’s, what should I say, like opening it up again to try to get it down to cotton fibres again. It’s like a fibre when it comes off the front end. I don’t know whether it shows any on here at the moment. But it’s like a fibre when it comes out, just like a film of cotton and it goes through, oh I forget what you call them now, but it goes through the front end of the card and you’ve got, it’s rolled then, the machine actually rolls it so it’s like a thick cotton you know, about an inch in diameter.
Is that what you call a roving?
R- Some of it is yes., some of that is roving.
And it's sort of…
R - And it puts it in a can then that’s revolving and so that fills your can up.
In a coil.
R - In a coil yes.
Yes, and then the interesting thing about that if I remember rightly is that it’s fed out from the top so there’s another mixing process going because it’s fed in from the bottom and fed out from the top.
R – Yes but we are going off again then, we could get that when we get to the Derby Doubler.
Well I was just mentioning that it was another blending process.
[Roland’s being a bit obtuse with Mary here because she’s actually making a very important point, albeit slightly off the mark. One of the things that has always struck me about the processing of cotton fibre is the way that reversing the flow at each stage is used as a tool for helping ensure maximum straightening of the fibres ]
R- ‘Cause really you are blending all the way through.
Yes. What’s the process. Sorry.
(850)
R - You've got two… Now you've got two laps on each card, which again must be a blending, because they've not been made at the same time.
That’s right. And they are going through really slowly aren't they?
R - Yes, they go through slowly them.
And what’s the process at the front called? You know where there is those metal bars jogging off the cotton, off those spiked bars all the time?
R- That’s combing is that.
Combing? That's right, it's a mechanized comb.
R- I was thinking then, it's that long since I did it.
A mechanised version of the old hand cards isn’t it. And then it’s set off into this sort of roll isn’t it.
R- Yes. Because it's even combed on finisher cards as well. It’s combed on to…
On to the rollers isn’t it.
R – Yes. Because I think that really that’s the only way you'll get it off the cylinder, comb it off.
(45 min)
Yes, because they are like teasels aren’t they. Picture 26.
R- And twenty six isn’t so different than 25 apart from the fact that you can see that he’s taken off the empty shell. Now that’s what your laps run on off the scutcher. I wonder what he is doing there our Charlie?
Those fine bits of cotton you can see?
R- Yes well they’re from the pirns on your scutcher. It keeps your lap in place, if you didn’t have them it’d all be …
Matted up together.
R - Yes. And it just wouldn’t run.
It just separates each layer, each roll doesn't it?
R- Yes, each turn of the lap.
That’s right, yes.
R- I think he’s got a ….
Break down?
R – A scotch. I think he has got a scotch in his fan on the top there.
A what? A whisky scotch?
4 – It’s blocked up. Not that sort of scotch, like a scotch on a wheel.
I’ve never heard that expression. It’s the same one I suppose that you use for ‘that scotched it’ which means sort of broken up.
R - It stopped it. It's like people say when you've got a car, put a brick under, if it’s on a run it’ll scotch it. It won’t move with a brick under the wheel.
Yea, that's right, this is the same sort of expression.
R - Well, I think he’s got it blocked near the fan. The fan sucks the cotton you know where there’s dust and so on, off the top there. Now each one has got like a vent on the top and if they get stuck you can pull like a tin plate out to clear it and put it back on again. That’s what our Charlie’s doing there. Oh, now then, 27. that’s the front end of the breaker card. That’s one of his bad photographs as well because you can’t see the comb.
You are quite right.
R- Now that is the front end of your breaker. Now as I’ve said, at the front, just in front of this doffer, that’s the small cylinder you can see turning. Now, you can see your cotton there, it’s fluffed up. Now it goes through these rollers at the side and it’s rolled into…
SCG/04 July 2003
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