, In preparing raw silk for dying, the thread is slightly twisted, in order to enable it to bear the action of the hot liquor without the fibres separating or furring up. The silk yarn employed by the weavers for the woof or weft, of the stuff, which they fabricate, is composed of two or more threads of the raw silk slightly twisted by the aid of machinery ; and the thread employed by the stocking weaver is of the same kind, but composed of a number of threads corresponding with the strength or quality of the work he is executing.
The first operation it undergoes is winding ; that is, drawing it off from the skeins in which it is imported, and winding it upon wooden bobbins, from whence it is taken off for subsequent operations. In the ordinary method of winding off silk, the reel or swift, upon which the skein is placed, is made to revolve by the pulling of the thread, as it is drawn off and wound upon the bobbin. The great delicacy of the filaments of silk often, however, render this difficult, owing to the breaking of the threads ; in the winding of Turkish silk, in particular, the process is, from the circumstance just mentioned, extremely tedious, as the thread breaks at almost every turn of the reel ; this Is owing to the great size of the Turkish skeins, which frequently exceed twenty four feet in circumference ; thus requiring a reel of equal dimensions, that has to be turned round by a single thread; and this thread, being of an uneven thickness, frequently gets entangled in the skein, and unavoidably breaks. To obviate so great an inconvenience and detriment to the material (by an infinity of knots in the thread,) the attention of Mr. H. R. Fanshaw was directed, and by means the most simple and ingenious, be accomplished his object in the most happy and perfect manner ; this invention, for which he took out a patent in 1827, we shall here describe.
Instead of the reel being turned round by the filament, it remains stationary. but is suspended loosely upon its axis ; a light arm or flyer is then made to revolve around the external circumference of the reel, which lifts out the thread from the skein more smoothly and delicately than it could be performed by the conducts it to the centre of motion, and from thence to the bobbin on which it is wound. By this contrivance the thread requires but little more strength than is sufficient to sustain itself, instead of having to drag round a great machine; and it follows that a much finer thread may be wound off by such apparatus than by those of the common construction. Our limits do not
at present permit us to give all the details of this machinery; we shall therefore confine ourselves chiefly to explaining the principal or most important parts, as represented by the annexed diagram. Fig. 1 gives a side elevation, and rig. 2 a front elevation of a portion of .Ftg. 1; the same letters in each referring to similar parts. a 6 is a frame, containing a swift, &c. of which there may be conceived to be a hundred or more in a row, one behind the other, as viewed in lig. 1, all turned by the same shaft ; the diameter of the swift may be considered as eight feet for Turkey silk, but the arms c c are made to elongate or shorten by the slides shown in the middle, so that the swift may be expanded or contracted at pleasure to suit the size of the skein; of these radiating arms is fixed into a central block or nave d ; through his nave a spindle passes, on which the swift loosely rests, as best seen in Fig. 2; e is a pulley, which revolves on the same spindle, and receives its motion by an endless band from another pulley at o. To the pulley e is affixed the revolving arm which is furnished at its extremity with a bent wire, coiled up into two spiral eyes • through that at g the filament of silk t t passes as it is lifted by it out of the skein h ; from g it passes through the eye t ; from hence it is drawn through another eye i, to the central eye k, 2,) and through the last-mentioned on to a bobbin fixed on the same shaft as the pulley o. The situation of the eye k opposite the centre of the axis of the swift, it will be observed, is indispensable to the winding off the thread ; it is fixed to the end of a movable rod which has a joint at I, that permits it at pleasure to be drawn forward beyond the range of the swift, for the girl in attendance to repair the threld should it be broken. The latter circumstance, however, rarely occurs, by these improved arrangements, did the trembling motion of the bent wire at the extremity of the revolving flyer greatly assists in relieving the silk from entanglement.