The Spinning of Silk Waste

The flat dressing frame is a box or frame holding a certain number of book-boards from the filling engine, which boards when full of silk are screwed tightly together in the frame. The frame is capable of being raised into contact with travelling combs, affixed to an endless belt placed round two metal rollers about 6f t. apart. The attendant allows the silk to enter gradually into close contact with the combs, which comb through the silk in exactly the same manner as a lady combs her tresses. In a circular frame the silk is clamped between boards, and these are fixed on a large drum. This drum revolves slowly, and in its revolution conveys the fringes of silk past two quickly running smaller combing drums. These combing drums being covered with fine steel teeth pene trate their combs through the fringes of silk depending from the large drum, thus combing through the silk. In each machine the object is the same. First the filled silk is placed into a holding receptacle, clamped fast and presented to combing teeth. These teeth retain a certain proportion of shorter fibre and rough places and tangled portions of silk, which are taken off the combs in a book-board or wrapped round a stick and again presented to the combs. This fibre again yields combings which will also be combed, and so on for five or six times until the combings are too short, and are taken from the machine and known as "noils." The productions from these several combings are known as "drafts" and are of different lengths : the product of the filled silk first placed in the dressing frame being the longest fibre and of course the most valuable.

The flat frame is the most gentle in its usage of the silk, but is most costly in labour ; while the circular frame, being more severe in its action, is not suitable for the thoroughly degummed silks, but on the other hand is best for silks containing much wormy matter, because the silk hanging down into the combing teeth is thoroughly cleansed of such foreign matter, which is deposited under the machine. This method also has the advantage of being cheaper in cost of labour. A machine has been invented giving the same results as the circular frame : the silk descends from boxes into combs, and at the same time has the gentle action of the flat frame. The cost of the operations is as cheap as the cir cular frame, therefore the machine combines the advantages of each of its predecessors.

Noils.—The noils resulting from the dressing operations are sometimes combed, the comb used being similar to those used in the cotton trade. The resulting sliver is used by silk spinners who make a speciality of spinning short fibres, and the exhaust noils are bought by those who spin them up into "noil yarns" on the same principle as wool. The yarns are chiefly used by manu facturers of powder bags. The noils are also in great demand for mixing with wool to make fancy effects in wool cloths for the dress goods trade.

Drafts.—The drafts from the dressing frame are valued in accordance with their length of fibre, the longest being known as A or 1st drafts and so on:— Each draft may be worked into a quality of its own, and by such means the most level yarns are obtained. But occasionally one or more drafts are mixed together, when price is the determining factor.

Processes Peculiar to Silk Spinning Industry.

The f ore going processes are all peculiar to the silk waste trade, no other fibre having to go through such processes, nor needing such machinery. In the first stages of the spun-silk industry, the silk was dressed before boiling the gum out; the resulting drafts were cut into lengths of one or two inches. The silk was then boiled and afterwards beaten, scutched, carded, drawn, spun, folded, etc., in exactly the same way as fine cotton. Short fibre

silks are still put through cards and treated like cotton; but the value of silk is in its lustre, elasticity and strength, which char acteristics are obtained by keeping fibres as long as possible. Therefore, when gill drawing machinery was invented, the cutting of silk into short fibres ceased, and long silks are now prepared for spinning in what is known as "long spinning process." Fol lowing the process of dressing, the drafts have to go through a series of machines known as preparing machines : the object being spinning.

Preparing or Drawing Machinery.--A

faller or gill draw ing machine consists of a long feeding sheet which conveys silk to a pair of rollers (back rollers). These rollers present the silk to a set of fallers (steel bars into which are fixed fine steel pins), which carry forward the silk to another pair of rollers, which draw the silk through the pins of the fallers and present it to the rollers in a continuous way, thus forming a ribbon of silk called a "sliver." The fallers are travelled forwards by means of screws, and when at the end of the screw are dropped auto matically into the thread of a receiving screw fixed below, which carries the fallers back to their starting point to be raised by cams into the top pair of screws thus to repeat their journey.

Silk Spreader.

This is the first of the series of drawing machines. The drafts from the dressing frame are made into little parcels of a few ounces in weight, and given to the spreader, who opens out the silk and spreads it thinly and evenly onto the feeding sheet, placing a small portion of the silk only on the sheet. Another portion is opened out and placed tail end to the first portion; and these operations are repeated until the requisite weight is spread. During this time the silk has been conveyed through the fallers and into a large receiving drum about 3ft. in diameter, the silk being wrapped thinly and evenly all round the circumference of the drum. When the agreed-on weight is on the drum, the silk is drawn across the face of the drum parallel with its axle, and pulled off in form of a sheet, and is called a lap. This lap is thin, but presents the fibres of silk now joined and overlapped in a continuous form, the length measured by the circumference of the drum. This lap is some times re-spread to make it more even, and at other times taken to a drawing machine which delivers in a sliver form. This sliver is taken through a series of four other drawing machines called "four head drawing box." Eight or more slivers are put behind the first drawing head, conveyed through the fallers and made into one sliver in front of the machine. This sliver is put up behind the second drawing; eight or more ends together run through the second head again into one sliver; and so on through the third and fourth heads of drawing. All these doublings of the sliver and re-drawing are for the purpose of getting each fibre to lie parallel and to make the sliver of an equal weight over every yard of its length. From the last head of drawing the sliver is taken to a machine known as a gill rover. This is a drawing machine fitted with fallers through which the sliver is drawn, but the end from the front roller is wound onto a bobbin. The machine is fitted with 20 to 40 of these bobbins placed side by side, and its product is known as "slubbing roving," it being now a soft, thick thread of silk, measuring usually either 84o or 1,26oyd. to 'lb. weight. Hitherto all the drawing has been by rollers and fallers, but in the next machine the drawing is done by rollers only.