IMPROVEMENTS IN APPARATUS FOR SHAPING PLASTIC MATERIALS
Year: 1870

page_text: LETTERS PATENT to William Fullarton Murray, Potter, and Thomas
Duncan McFarlane, Machinist, both of Glasgow, in the County of
Lanark, North Britain, for the Invention of "IMPROVEMENTS IN
APPARATUS FOR SHAPING PLASTIC MATERIALS."
Sealed the 14th October 1870, and dated the 18th April 1870.
PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by the said William Fullarton
the Office of the
Murray and Thomas Duncan McFarlane at
Commissioners of Patents, with their Petition, on the 18th April
1870.
We, WILLIAM FULLARTON MURRAY, Potter, and THOMAS DUNCAN
MCFARLANE, Machinist, both of Glasgow, in the County of Lanark,
North Britain, do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for
"IMPROVEMENTS IN APPARATUS FOR SHAPING PLASTIC MATERIALS," to be as
follows, that is to say :-
This Invention has principally for its object the adaptation of apparatus
for shaping plastic materials into certain comparatively difficult forms

page_text: so as to dispense, to a certain extent, with the skilled labor hitherto
required and so as to produce the articles in a rapid and economical
manner. Earthenware bottles are of the class of articles for which the
improved apparatus is more particularly designed, and it may be modified
to suit various similar forms in which the mouth or opening is more or
less contracted as compared with the interior of the article. Some of
the improved arrrangements are however also applicable for shaping
ordinary and other forms.
The improved apparatus, as adapted for shaping bottles, comprises a
mould of an internal configuration corresponding to the external shape
of the bottom and lower cylindrical portion of the bottle. This mould
may be of the ordinary kind, or it may be made in two or more parts
arranged to be easily separated for the removal of each bottle as soon as
formed, and it is mounted on a potter's wheel or equivalent apparatus by
which it is made to rotate about a vertical axis. A lump of the clay or
plastic material out of which the bottle is to be formed is put into the
mould, and an internal shaping scraper which does not rotate is moved
gradually down, being upon a vertical spindle accurately guided in a
bracket above. This internal scraper shapes the lower part of the
interior of the bottle, spreading the clay up the sides of the mould and
causing it to rise tube-like above the top of the mould. The top of the
mould corresponds or nearly so with the level of the bottle, where it
begins to contract to form the neck. When the sides are sufficiently
shaped by the internal scraper it is raised up out of the way and an
external shaping scraper of a suitable shape and fixed on a slide or on a
joint is moved or turned inwards and causes the projecting clay to take
the desired contracted form for the neck, at the same time that an
internal neck shaper comes into action inside of the neck to regulate the
thickness of the clay. The internal neck shaper is a suitably bent metal
rod or wire fixed on a spindle in such a way that it can be withdrawn
from the bottle by turning the spindle, the spindle having on it a pinion
with which there gears a sliding rack whereby the requisite movement
is effected. The extreme end of the neck may be shaped by scrapers
separate from those which shape the other part of the neck. In cases
where the body of the bottle or article is of a bulging form the internal
shaping scraper first introduced is to be made with jointed or movable
pieces, arranged to be drawn inwards on withdrawing the scraper. In
some cases the mould may be wholly or partially dispensed with, the
sides being shaped by means of internal and external scrapers acting

page_text: together and suitably shaped and guided for producing the desired
form.
One machine or framing may be fitted with two or more sets of the
parts for the purpose of forming two or more articles simultaneously,
and the several sets of parts may be actuated by a single set of cams or
equivalent parts.