FULLING, the art or act of cleansing, scouring, and pressing cloths, stuffs, and stockings, to render them stronger, closer, and firmer; called also milling. The full ing of cloths and other stuffs is performed by a kind of water-mill, thence called a fulling or scouring-mill. These mills, ex cept in what relates to the mill-stones and hopper, are much the same with corn mills : and there are even some which serve indifferently for either use ; corn being ground, and cloths fulled, by the rnotion of the same wheel. Whence, in some places, particularly in France, the fullers are called millers ; as grinding corn and milling stuffs at the same time. The method of fulling cloths and woollen stuffs with soap is this: a coloured cloth is to be laid in the usual manner in the trough of a fulling-mill, without first soaking it in water, as is commonly practised in many places. To full this trough of cloth, 15 pounds of soap are required, one half of which is to be melted in two pails of river or spring water, made as hot as the hand can well bear it. This solution is to be
poured by little and little upon the cloth, in proportion as it is laid in the trough ; and thus it is to be fulled for at least two hours ; after which it is to be taken out And stretched. This'done, the cloth is im mediately returned into the same trough, without any new soap, andthenfulled two how s more. Then taking it out, they wring it well, to express all the grease and filth. After the second fulling, the re mainder of the soap is dissolved as in the former, and cast four different times on the cloth, remembering to take out the cloth every two hours to stretch it, and Undo the plates and wrinkles it has acquir ed in the trough. When,theyperceive it sufficiently fulled, and brought to the qua lity and thickness required, they scour it in water, keeping it in the trough till it is quite clean. As to white cloths, as these full more easily and in less time than co loured ones, a third part of the soap may be spared.