MYSTERY OBJECTS

[Stanley]

The trees are nothing to do with it Tiz, it's on display here at a museum. Pressure cooker is correct but original purpose isn't. You're getting very warm.
Sorry China but no.

[chinatyke]

Is it an old kier boiler for boiling cloth, especially linen and cotton, under pressure with caustic soda solution prior to bleaching (or more accurately as part of the bleaching process)? Only type I've seen were upright ones with a separate reboiler arrangement through which the caustic solution was recirculated and heated.

[Stanley]

You have got it China! Originally used in bleaching and dyeing cloth under steam pressure while being rotated.
Tiz, you were partially right about wood because the ones I came across had been saved from scrapping because a new use had been found for them, boiling up wood and perhaps paper also in caustic to make the raw material for tea bags. The ones I saw were at Bolton and there was a double bank of them with about 9 kiers on each side I think. Very impressive, bigger than this one and we had to put some new rivets in on the trunnion base plate where the rivets were 4" long.
Next one?

[chinatyke]

There is a grisly story about vertical kier boilers. The cloth is fed into them from above in 'rope' form. The cloth must be evenly distributed around the inside so that it doesn't "turn" during the pressure boiling because if it does the end cannot be found and it means cutting the cloth to extract it and it could take a week to empty the kier. These kiers would hold thousands of yards of cloth and tons of caustic liquor. In the olden days, young boys were engaged to 'pile' the rope around the kier, standing inside with a stick and arranging the rope evenly as it was fed in. The boy was extracted, the kier sealed and boiled overnight. One night a boy was left inside the kier when it was sealed. That changed the law and automatic pilers had to be installed after that. This formed part of the talk given when we showed visitors around Loveclough Printworks.

[Stanley]

Ah, Loveclough! I wanted to do a segment of the LTP on finishing and Loveclough would have been ideal but I couldn't persuade the steering committee that it was important. I still think that was a big mistake.

[Stanley]

Can anyone tell me what this is?

[chinatyke]

Is it a type of clutch to engage/disengage the drive to whatever it was attached?

[Stanley]

No China, but you are in the right area. The clue is the roller in the slot at the top of the lever.....

[Tizer]

This formed part of the talk given when we showed visitors around Loveclough Printworks.

Grisly stories always feature in such talks. When I took parties around the brewery I used to tell them the true stories about men who had fallen into the fermentation vats on the night shift and couldn't get out. Also the engineers who had suffocated in the dense CO2 under the fermentation vessels while doing maintenance work. people expected it - if you omitted the stories someone was bound to say `What about that chap who fell in?' I was told similar tales about people falling into the oil saponification vats (caustic soda) when I spent some time at an edible oil refinery.

[chinatyke]

Second guess: I think it is a reversing gear.

[Stanley]

You've got it China and I won't insist on the whole story. It's the reversing gear in the drive train for the scrapers on the tubes of the economiser at Bancroft. The most fascinating thing about it is that it is automatic. As it operates the lever moves across slowly and at mid point the roller in the curved groove on top of the lever falls over in the slot knocking the lever over and reversing the drive. Then it does the same thing in the opposite direction. A very clever bit of kit!
Next one?

[Stanley]

I used this image not long ago in another context. What I want to know is if anyone can answer any of these questions.
What is it?
What was the original name for it and why?
What is the connection with having a good night's sleep?

[Cathy]

Does it make mattress springs?

[Stanley]

No Cathy but you have made the right connection. Remember we're talking old.

[Cathy]

Did the machine make this early type of mattress support. Are they called bed strings, can't remember the correct name.

The On-Line Buzzletter_ Part 2_ Origins of Sayings_ Sleep ___.jpg

[chinatyke]

I think it is for processing cotton and removing the seeds producing a cotton "mat" - was it called a scutcher? These would be used in mattress making.

[Stanley]

Almost there China but remember, this was a fulling mill and the staple was wool.

[Gloria]

Blanket making?

[Stanley]

I have to come clean, China was so close. The machine is a Willow, so called because the original machines used willow withies to make the grid in the bottom that allowed dirt to fall out of it. The later machines were called Flock Shakers and they worked by loading staple fibre, either cotton or wool and the pegs on the drum tore the staple apart allowing any detritus to fall through the grid at the bottom.
In later days at Helmshore the machine was used mainly for processing the flock out of the flock mattresses in common use. You brought your lumpy mattress to the mill and the contents were taken out and put through the machine. This separated the lumps and 'lofted' the fibres which could then be replaced in the mattress cover. At the same time any dirt, dead insects etc. were shaken out and fell out of the bottom.
China was right again when he mentioned 'scutching'. Lofting mechanically was part of the scutching process with the difference that the end product was a mat of clean lofted fibre which could go forward for carding as part of the condenser spinning industry for wool or cotton.



The scutcher at Spring Vale, Haslingden.

[Cathy]

The process is a bit like the way a Dry Cleaner cleans bed quilts today. Wool, feather and down etc.

[plaques]

While we are on machines what's this?

.

[chinatyke]

Window cleaner/ maintenance cradle headgear on a high rise building?

[plaques]

I dare say that since its normally mounted on a ship it could be used for cleaning lighthouse windows. Two points for China for lateral thinking.

[Stanley]

Headgear for laying submarine cables?

[plaques]

Almost there. What kind of cables?