IMPROVEMENTS IN PREPARING, BEETLING, OR FINISHING TEXTILE FABRICS
Year: 1855

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to Thomas Ridgway Bridson, of Bolton-le-Moors, in
the County of Lancaster, Bleacher, for the Invention of "IMPROVEMENTS
IN PREPARING, BEETLING, OR FINISHING TEXTILE FABRICS."
Sealed the 29th June 1855, and dated the 2nd May 1855.
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by the said Thomas Ridgway Bridson
at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with his Petition, on the
2nd May 1855.
I, THOMAS RIDGWAY BRIDSON, of Bolton-le-Moors, in the County of
Lancaster, Bleacher, do hereby declare the nature of my said Invention for
"IMPROVEMENTS IN PREPARING, BEETLING, OR FINISHING TEXTILE FABRICS," to be
as follows, that is to say:-
This Invention relates to a system or mode of treating or preparing textile
fabrics in such manner as to produce a beetling or finishing effect entirely
by rotatory action upon the goods. Under one simple modification of the
machinery or apparatus which is employed for carrying out this system of

page_text: treating woven goods, the parts are arranged in the form of a bleacher's mangle
The horizontal central roller is
or calendering machine of three rollers.
arranged to revolve in stationary bearings in the vertical frame of the machine,
and the other two rollers, one above and one below the central roller, aro
carried in moveable bearings having a free vertical traverse. The three rollers
may be either geared together to work in concert, or they may work entirely
by surface contact. The central roller or cylinder is the main working beetler
or finisher, whilst the two external rollers are the pressure-resisting rollers.
The central working roller is made with alternated surface and sunk portions
over its entire surface. It is preferred to be cast in metal, with squares or
diamonds, alternately faces and sunk parts; these lines or series of relievo and
intaglio parts being either parallel with the roller's axis in that direction, or
slightly inclined thereto, so as to produce a spiral action in working. The
fabric to be treated is beamed or wound upon one of the external rollers, and
in the process of working it wound off this roller, and passed round one side
of the central roller, being finally wound upon the opposite external roller.
The two external rollers are kept in hard and close contact with the central
roller by weighted levers, or by other convenient means, the object being, to
cause the central roller to exert a powerful squeezing pressure upon the fabric
as wound upon both external rollers. When the machine is put in motion the
fabric is continually wound off one external roller on to the other, whilst the
folds upon
both rollers are undergoing the necessary pressure from the central
roller, the fabric being passed and repassed from one external roller to the
other until the process is complete. The effect of this treatment is, that not
only does the central roller cause a powerful pressure in a line parallel with
the axes of the coils of beamed fabric, and hence produce a corresponding
bulge of the coils, but the bulge occurs as well at each alternation of the faces
and recesses on the central roller. This alternation may obviously be of finer
or coarser pitch, or the face pieces of larger or smaller extent, as may be
desired in practice, the object being the production of a beetling or finishing
effect, by alternating severe pressure with escaping bulges at short intervals
over the entire fabric, without having recourse to severe hammering. The
machine too may be driven at a very rapid rate without impairing its action,
or producing any other serious inconvenience. The central roller surface may
be formed in various ways, still producing alternations of level. Projecting
pieces may be inserted in its surface at the proper distances asunder; or a rope
or other hard substance may be coiled spirally round the roller with a similar
view; or, instead of this coiling, the same or a similar effect may be produced

page_text: by forming the spiral out of the solid of the roller. It will be obvious to the
practical man that the details of apparatus of this kind may be combined in
various ways so as to effect by direct rotatory pressure or force what has
hitherto been always done by a broken movement of impact. The effect of
the alternations of face and sunk parts is that of rotatory fallers or hammers;
each face part as it comes round in rotating gives its own special beetling
effect to the goods.