The mirror., 1922-06-01
MAKING WALL PAPER

forms the first operation. A web of blank
paper is set in a reel behind one of these
machines. The free end of the paper on
the web is pulled forward and placed be-
tween two cylinders which drag it into
the machine, where a roller, part of which
is working in "color pan" filled with
thin paint, puts large quantity of color
on the paper. A set of fiat brushes, called
''jiggers," work rapidly back and forth,
working this coloring matter in and spread
ing it evenly over the surface of the paper,
so that when the cylinders at the rear end
of the machine drag it out, it is thoroughly
painted in water color on one side.
AS it comes from the blotching machine
workman takes the free end of the pa
per and wraps it around stick, which is
carried up an incline by two parallel end
less chains. After 1s feet of the paper has
run out, these chains pick up another stick
which lies across them and bears paper
on it. This last stick chases the first one
up and gains on it until only foot be-
hind, when it stops gaining and both
travel along, maintaining that relative dis
tance with the paper between them looped
down until it nearly touches the floor.
One hundred other sticks do precisely
as the second one did, and the result is
that there are soon 100 loops of paper,
each loop containing 1S feet.
The elevated railway of parallel chains
on which the sticks from which the paper
is looped are travelling turns corners of
the building at will, and soon the blotch-
ing machine has run the whole web out
and it is hanging in loops over system
of steam pipes, which dry it so fast as it
moves along that it is perfectly dry before
it reaches the farther end of the chain rail-
way, where boy with reel winds it
back into web form again.
The designs are first sketched out on pa
per and then transferred by an ordinary
process on the faces of rollers made to
suit the size required-an 1S-inch design,
for instance, requiring roller six inches
in diameter. Perhaps the design requires
printing in IL colors (which is the highest
number ordinarily run). To do this IL
rollers would be prepared, each having
the design on it and each of size exactly
equal to that of the others.
When the rollers are all prepared the
artist will direct skilled workmen, who
are with him, to fix one up to take the
brown, another red, another yellow, and
so on. Let the brown color serve as an
example for all.
The workman takes the roller to his
BENCH where he puts it in wise and goes
to work on it, Every bit of the design,
which is TO be in brown. is traced out for
him and he reproduces it in relief on the
roller with his bronze wires and rods and
ribbons which he drives into the hard
wood so solidly that they stick there as if
they had grown. The brass wire can be
given any ordinary shape by drawing it
by machinery through hole of cores
ponding shape in steel bar. This is
the way the roller, which will print in
brown, is first fitted up. When it is fin
ished, it bears on its face in raised brass,
fragments of leaves and parts of birds
and sheaves of wheat, and little and ap-
parently unnecessary and unshaped points
of metal, all of which at the proper place
and time will put the brown coloring in
exactly the place where the designer wants
it to go.
When the roller has had all its share of
the design hammered into it, it is taken to