The Republican. [volume] (Oakland, Md.) 1877-current, 1885-07-11
RENovATlNG CORKs.
The Pioneer of the Business Tells How 1t
Is Done.

Is Done.
In a queer little room in a queer old
house in Forsyth street, at the end of an
old-fashioned brick-paved alleyway, a
snowy-bearded man, bubbling over with
good nature, sat at low bench yester-
day clipping corks with carving knife
as keen as razor. A little wooden
sign over the alleyway had the single
word "Corksn painted on it. "Corks"
was scrawled with chalk on the door of
the room in which the busy man sat,
and he himself was enthroned on an
old stool among great mounds of corkS
of all kinds and sizes. They were scat
tered in heaps on the bench, stored in
great paper bags at his feet, and piled
high in wooden boxes behind him. He
stropped the keen blade of the knife
against the edge of the bench every
little while, and clipped the corks be-
fore him with the regularity of machin-
cry, while he chatted with visitor
about the odd industry of making new
corks out of old ones. He was old Pop
Mackin, the pioneer of the trade of
renovating secondhand cOrks.
There are more people at the bust
ness now" he said, ethan anybody
would dream of. They 90 around buy
ing up all the secondhand corks they
can get at 50 a barrel. A barrel will
hold from twenty-seven to twenty-nine
gross OF corks. They get the old corks
from retail liquor stores, and then sort
them out according to size. Then
they're dumped into a big tub of cold
water and soaked till the dir is all
rinsed out. After that they're tossed
into boiler of hot water and steamed.
The steaming is done by covering the
boiler tightly with piece of heavy car
pet. 1t keeps the steam Imprisoned
and drives it through the cork The
cOrks are in all sorts of curious shapes
when they are put in the steam bath,
but no matter how they have been
crushed in. by the neck of the bottle or
by the wire and Irvine fastening-and
some of them are tough-oOking corks,
too-they come out of the bath perfectly
shaped again. After the bath the corks
are allowed to dry, and then we trim
them with 4 sharp knife. and they are
luSU as gOOu as new.
"But how the visitor asked, "can
YOU hide the damage where a corkscrew
has been bored through a cork?n
Easy enough" theOld man responded
with a laugh, as he picked out a perfect
little cork; chat trick was done with a
cutting machine. The fact is, that a
corkscrew only damages, as a rule, the
top and bottom of a cork. The dam
aged cork is sent through a cutting ma
chine, and paired down until the dam
aged part is all cut away. Sometimes
it has to 90 through the machine two or
three times before it is perfect. but after
that it is as good as any cork that was
ever made. Corks cut that way are
called accommodation cOrks," and
are sold in great quantities to distiller-
les where they want cOrks to ram tightly
into all sorts of bottles"
How many corlls can man prepare
daily?"
at depends upon the corks; but an
industrious man can sort, wash, steam,
and trim about fifty gross of corks.
They are sold by the gross again. Some
times the profit is only 81 a barrel,
sometimes more
"Can you make it pay at that?''
Il guess I'm satisfied" Pop Mackin
said, decidedly. Il used to work in a
saltwater factory way back in '53.
when | first caught on to the idea from
fellow who came on from Philadel-
phia to buy up all the old corks he could
get. In the satisfactory | got a dollar
a day. | tried cork renovating, and
found that | could spend lots of time
chatting with friends that | met in the
daytime, and could make Just as much.
and often more, than when I worked
steady at the saltwater business. [
went to the war for three years. A man
who hadn't $50 to his name when left
took hold of the business while was
away. When | got home again found
him living in a house of his own in
Twelfth Street. He had made the cost
of it by buying up old corks, and old
bottles too, and renovating them. He
sold them again at a handsome profit.
because it was war times and business
was booming | never was as lucky as
that, but there's many a man at a more
ambitious business worse off and much
less contented than am, my boy, and
you can tell them so from me. ~. Y.
Sun.