IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF SIZE FROM WET CALF WHITE LEATHER SHAVINGS OR CUTTINGS
Year: 1884

page_text: COMPLETE SPECIFICATION.
I ISAAC CRIPPS the younger of N° 36 Northway Road Loughborough Junction
Brixton in the County of Surrey Size Maker do hereby declare the nature of my
Invention for IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF SIZE FROM WET CALF
WHITE LEATHER SHAVINGS OR CUTTINGS " and in what manner the same is to be
performed, to be particularly described and ascertained in and by the following
statement:—
I soak in cold clean water for six hours or more wet calf white leather shavings
or wet calf white leather cuttings. The shavings are then washed out and allowed
to drain. This preliminary process is usual and is known to size manufacturers.
The shavings or cuttings thus washed are then put into rather more than their
own weight of warm water of a temperature of 120° Fahrenheit or thereabouts
into which there has been previously placed a solution made by dissolving ordinary
soda in boiling water in the proportion of about 3 lbs of soda for each hundred
weight of shavings or cuttings. The warm liquor is well stirred while the shavings
or cuttings are being put in and for some little time afterwards. The shavings or
cuttings are allowed to remain in the above mentioned liquor for twelve hours or
more. The whole mixture is then well stirred and afterwards drawn out upon a
screen such as is used by builders for screening sand this screen being placed in a
slanting position from the top of the vat containing the shavings or cuttings to
the top of a lower vat or tub containing clean cold water. The shavings or
cuttings are pushed down the screen into the lower vat and from this lower vat
are washed out clean and allowed to remain ten or twelve hours to drain when
they will be ready for boiling.
The shavings or cuttings thus prepared are then put into an ordinary. Copper or
pan provided with a steam coil or jacket bottom and with an outlet in the lower
part of the pan to which a tap is fixed such a pan so fitted is well known to size
manufacturers In this pan there has been previously placed round the outlet to
the tap a wire gauze trap or cage made of gauze about one eighth of an inch in
the mesh. This trap or cage is filled with clean cow or other hair to form a means
of draining the liquor as it passes out of the outlet after the boiling next
hereinafter mentioned.

page_text: As the shavings or cuttings are being charged into the pan boiling water is run
slowly upon them till they are covered. They are then boiled for about five hours
and allowed to settle down for about half an hour and. the size is then run off
through the wire gauze drainage and tap aforesaid.
The size so run off is then treated with alum in the usual manner.
Having now particularly described and ascertained the nature of my said
Invention and in what manner the same is to be performed I declare that what I
claim is:-
The manufacture of size from wet calf white leather shavings or wet calf white.
Jeather cuttings substantially in the manner hereinbefore described.
2. The use of soda substantially as herein before described in the manufacture
aforesaid.
3.. The use in the manufacture of a wire cage or trap filled with cow or other
hair substantially as and for the purposes herein before described.
4. The use in the manufacture aforesaid of a screen for carrying the shavings
to the lower vat and the subsequent washing the same shavings in clean cold
water substantially as hefore described.
Deted this 21st day of January 1981.