AN IMPROVED APPARATUS OR MACHINE FOR REMOVING THE SEEDS OR STONES FROM RAISINS AND OTHER DRIED FRUIT
Year: 1866

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by William Robert Lake at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
9th February 1866.-A communication from abroad by William
Emerson Baker, of Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America.
I, WILLIAM ROBERT LAKE, of the "International Patent Office," No. 8,
Southampton Buildings,, Chancery Lane, in the County of Middlesex,
Consulting Engineer, do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention
for "AN IMPROVED APPARATUS OR MACHINE FOR REMOVING THE SEEDS OR STONES
FROM RAISINS AND OTHER DRIED FRUIT," a communication, to be as follows:-
This Invention consists in its simplest form of a stamp-like handle, in
the plane surface of which are inserted at uniformly small distances apart,
say, one-twelfth of an inch from centre to centre, numerous small wires
projecting from the face of the stamp, about one-fourth of an inch, and of a
yeilding stamp bed preferably of rubber. To operate with this apparatus
a raisin is placed on the rubber bed and the stamp is then thrust upon the
raisin, the wires perforating the skin and pulp but not the seeds or stones,
which being hard, are carried before the blunt points of the wires through
the skin of the fruit, and are embedded in the rubber, the pulp of the
fruit being impaled on the wires. On removal of the stamp from the
bed, the stone will be found adhering to the raisin but projecting therefrom,
so that it can be scraped off, and then the fruit can be removed from the
wires. To this simple apparatus may be added mechanism for working
the stone scraper and the fruit clearers. To make a machine which shall

page_text: operate rapidly and continuously the rubber bed is made in the form of a
roll, and the perforating wires are set in another roll, both being adjusted
so that the ends of the wires shall just press against the rubber, and it is
best to have the rolls so connected as to revolve toward each other and at
the same surface speed. In connection with these rolls there should be a
hopper to be filled with the fruit, from which the stems and foreign sub-
stances are removed, the hopper being arranged to shake or otherwise
devised to deliver the fruit into the bite of the two rolls, there being in
connection with the hopper a guard which will prevent too many raisins
from falling between the rolls at the same time. In connection with the
wired cylinder is the seed scraper and the set of fruit clearers or strippers,
both being stationary. As the rolls or cylinders revolve the fruit falling
between them is impaled on the wires, and the seeds are forced out as before
described. In the continued rotation the seeds are brought against the
scraper which is adjusted so as almost to touch the ends of the wires, and
are of course removed. The clearers are thin pieces of metal, the points
of which are best made to fit in grooves turned in the toothed cylinder
between the rows of the wires, so that the points of the clearers come
even with the surface in which the wires are set, the bodies of the clearers
increasing in size so that they extend beyond the ends of the wires, thus
forming wedges by which the fruit is forced off from the wires by the
rotation of the cylinder in which they are set. Under the toothed
cylinder separate boxes are provided to receive the seeds and the seedless
fruit.