A NEW MODE OF PROTECTING BUTTER FOR THE PURPOSES OF SAFE TRANSIT AND STORAGE IN CASKS, CASES, BOXES, BAGS, AND OTHERWISE, FROM THE ACTION OF THE WOOD, AND ATMOSPHERE, AND OTHER INJURIOUS INFLUENCES, BY MEANS OF A VEGETABLE PAPER WRAPPER OF INNOCUOUS MATERIAL
Year: 1879

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by John Flynn at the Office of the Com-
missioners of Patents on the 18th January 1879.
JOHN FLYNN, of 37, 38, 39, and 40, Pope's Quay, Cork, in that part of the United
Kingdom called Ireland, Butter Merchant. "A NEW MODE OF PROTECTING BUTTER
FOR THE PURPOSES OF SAFE TRANSIT AND STORAGE IN CASKS, CASES, BOXES,
BAGS, AND OTHERWISE, FROM THE ACTION OF THE WOOD, AND ATMOSPHERE, AND
OTHER INJURIOUS INFLUENCES, BY MEANS OF A VEGETABLE PAPER WRAPPER OF
INNOCUOUS MATERIAL."
The application of vegetable paper as a wrapper for butter in casks or firkins,
cases, boxes, bags, and otherwise.
At present, and for a long time past, the custom of the export butter trade in
putting up butter for transit across seas and from one part of the country to another
has been to pack the butter in firkins or casks and boxes wrapped in muslin or
cotton cloth, and recently a new mode of wrapping butter has been patented, which
consists of the application of tin foil as a wrapper in place of the cotton cloth.
The first of these methods is objectionable, as it affords little or no protection to
the butter from the effects of the atmosphere or the taint communicated by the
wood, and in warm weather, when the butter becomes soft and to a certain extent
melts, it cannot prevent its escape through the joints of the cask, or firkin, or box.
The other method has the objection of not being so cheap as mine, the tin foil also
being much less durable and more liable to get torn.
It has also been the custom bitherto to pack small quantities of butter (from one
to twenty eight pounds weight) in tin cases, but this method is objectionable on
account of the cost of the cases, and the superiority of my Invention, applied as
hereinafter mentioned, consists in a very considerable cheapening in the package of
these small quantities of butter, such packages being made up in my vegetable
paper at about a tenth of the cost of the tin cases. For the purpose of protecting
these small parcels of butter the vegetable paper is made into bags of the required
size. The butter is then packed into these bags and weighed, and a number of the
bags are packed into a box and are then ready for transit or storage. The retail
dealer in receiving one of these boxes has the advantage of having small quantities
of butter, such as a number of his customers are likely to require, in a state of as
perfect preservation as if packed in the tin cases hitherto used, at a cost very
slightly exceeding that of the butter supplied to him in the manner hitherto usual
[Price 2d1

page_text: in casks. In this method there is also the following advantage over the tin foil
wrapper-When some butter has been taken out of a cask wrapped in tin foil a
portion of what remains is exposed to the injurious effects of the atmosphere, while
when the butter is packed in my vegetable paper bags the retail dealer can take
out one bag, leaving all the others as completely protected as before, and may take
portions of the butter out of the bags, and closing them again the fullest protection
is afforded to what remains, to the last pound as well as to the whole quantity.
The wrapper used in the same way as the cotton cloth affords the same protection
to the butter in the cask or firkin from which small quantities are being taken
day and day, as when a portion of the butter has been removed the wrapper can be
replaced so as to exclude the air..
In packing the butter in casks the wrapper is applied in the manner in which
the cotton cloth has hitherto been applied, that is as follows:-The butter having
been first packed in the firkin or box, and so moulded to its shape, is removed there-
from by knocking off the hoops at the head of the firkin and turning it out on a
stripping board. The butter is then cleaned, and a sheet of the vegetable paper is
wrapped round it and another applied to the bottom (which is now uppermost),
after which it is put back into the firkin, the latter being held open by a galvanized
iron hoop of rather larger diameter than the firkin, temporarily placed within it to
prevent the wrapper being injured by the staves. A sheet of the wrapper is then
put on the head of the butter, which is now completely enveloped, and the head of
the firkin is nailed into its place.