An Improved Manufacture of Fire-lighter or Fire Lighting Material.
Year: 1891

page_text: te of Application, 18th Mar., 1891-Accepted, 9th May, 1891
COMPLETE SPECIFICATION,
An Improved Manufacture of Fire-lighter or Fire Lighting Material.
I, ALFRED LUTSCHAUNIG, of 59, South John Street, Liverpool, in the County
of Lancaster, Assayer, do hereby declare the nature of this invention and in
what manner the same is to be performed, to be particularly described and
ascertained in and by the following statement :-
The object of my invention is to provide a cheap fire-lighting material possessing
superior lighting properties. Fire-lighters or fire lighting material according to
this invention consists of or comprises cork shavings, or cuttings, or chippings, and
resin, or equivalent adhesive substance or substances, stuck together as cakes, slabs,
or blocks, and having apertures or interstices therethrough through which air can
pass, that is the cakes, slabs, or blocks are pervious to air.
In the production of this material or manufacture I take the shavings or
chippings of cork-wood produced in the manufacture of corks or other articles from
cork-wood, or waste cork of any kind, and I place such cork in a vessel containing
hot liquid resin either by itself or mixed with other like inflammable sticking
substance or liquid, and I mix the cork pieces and the resin together, and press
them by suitable means sufficiently to make the cork pieces adhere at the parts
where they touch each other when pressed together and allowed to cool.
A suitable proportion of resin to cork may be about 25 to 30 per cent.
by weight.
The cork shavings, chippings, or pieces are massed together and bound by the
resin in such a manner that while forming a compact mass they are at the same
time sufficiently apart to form spaces or interstices through the material, so that
the air has free access thereto, which enables the material to burn freely when
lighted, and moreover, room is left for the cork to swell and receive the resin as it
melts in burning.
I am aware that granulated cork or cork sawdust mixed with other substances
and formed into close blocks has been used as an ingredient in the manufacture of
fire lighters prior to my invention, but cork in this form is not only more expensive
than in the form of shavings or chippings as I employ it, nor is it nearly so
efficient or effe tive a lighting material as mine, since it, being in blocks and
compact, is but air spaces and generally does not burn so freely.
Fire light according to my invention can be made of any suitable shape or in
the form of cakes, bars, squares, circles, or the like, and there may be combined
with it if desired-other combustible substances.
Having now particularly described and ascertained the nature of this inven-
tion and in what manner the same is to be performed I declare that what I
claim is :-
The herein described manufacture of fire-lighters or fire lighting material, that is
to say, a manufacture or material consisting of cakes, slabs, or blocks composed of
shavings, chippings, or pieces of cork-wood of the nature herein specified and resin
or equivalent or analogous substance, and pervious to air, said cork pieces being
stuck together by the resin or equivalent or analogous substance and the space or
interstices by which said cakes, slabs or blocks are pervious to air being between
and about them; substantially as and for the purposes set forth.
Dated this 17th day of March 1891.
CHEESBROUGH & ROYSTON,
15, Water Street, Liverpool, Applicant's Patent Agents.