IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF FELTED CLOTH
Year: 1856

page_text: application for Letters Patent was not given within the time prescribed
by the Act.)
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Paul Rapsey Hodge at the Office
of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the 11th November
1856. A communication.
I, PAUL RAPSEY HODGE, of No. 4, Albion Grove, Barnsbury Park, in the
Parish of Islington, and County of Middlesex, do hereby declare the nature
of the said Invention for "IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF FELTED
CLOTH," to be as follows:-
In the process of manufacturing felted cloth, under the Letters Patent
granted to Mr. Thomas Robinson Williams, bearing date February 1840,
there is an open uncovered space between the last doffer of the carding engine
and the bat frame, which space holds, supported on an apron, the travelling i
sliver of wool which passes from the card to that frame. My Invention in part
consists in passing by suitable machinery backwards and forwards transversely
across that space of sliver, after several plies of it have entered the bat frame
and formed a bat of three, four, or more slivers in thickness, an incipient thread
or continuous roving of wool with one or more twists in it, such passing back-
wards and forwards transversely of the thread or roving, like a coil placed
closely against and parallel to each other, to be effected by suitable self-acting
machinery or otherwise for incorporation into the future cloth, and to be con-
tinued sufficiently long to occupy from end to end, and to incorporate itself

page_text: with or in the centre of the entire bát in course of being formed, and this I do
to strengthen and solidify the bat or ultimate cloth breadthways, and to give to
it in the nature of a weft a like tension breadthways, which felted cloth at
present possesses lengthways.
The manufacturer may, if he prefers, introduce these transverse threads or
rovings, or this coil of parallel threads or rovings, into the bat, or into the
travelling apron at the end of the frame opposite to that where it receives the
sliver from the carding engine.
Another part of my Invention is as follows:-In cases where it is desirable
to give encreased tension lengthways to the cloth which is being manufactured
under Williams's process, or in fact to manufacture a cloth with threads or
rovings placed lengthways, and also transversely across them or without, I
introduce, at the time when the bat above mentioned is a very few slivers thick,
a series of incipient threads or rovings with one or more twists in each, close
to each other, which rovings are wound off bobbins, and are carried forward
into the bat frame by the action of its progress with the travelling sliver. These
bobbins are placed upon a suitable properly constructed frame between the
carding engine and the bat frame, which frame may be moveable. Each
bobbin should be charged with a sufficient length exactly to run from end to
end of the bat in course of manufacture. These threads or rovings lengthways,
and also tho above-described transverse rovings breadthways, may be inserted
into a bat in combination, and form in themselves almost the entire bat, or be
inserted separately from each other. After the insertion of either or both
rovings, the travelling sliver should be continued as a plating above the threads
or rovings, and to assist to keep them in their places, and when sufficient wool,
or wool with other materials has been passed in the bat, including the wool in
the threads or rovings, the bat may be cut and wound off in the usual manner
for transmission to the hardner.
The bat frame or travelling apron may be so constructed at the opposite end
to the card by the manufacturer with a small obtruding or extended space in
the lowest coil of the apron, that these rovings lengthways may, if desirable, be
introduced into the bat at such opposite end.