IMPROVEMENTS IN PREPARING AND MANUFACTURING FLAX, HEMP, SILK, AND OTHER MATERIALS
Year: 1801

page_text: PARKER, TELFER, AND
FLEC
SPECI
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS SHALL COME, we, THOMAS
PARKER, of Broomward, near Glasgow, in the County of Lanerk, Esquire,
and WILLIAM TELFER and ALEXANDER AFFLECK, of Glasgow aforesaid,
Mathematical Instrument Makers, send greeting.
WHEREAS His most Excellent Majesty King George the Third, by His
Letters Patent under the Great Seal of Great Britain, bearing date at West-
minster the Third day of February, in the forty-first year of His reign, did
give and grant unto us, the said Thomas Parker, William Telfer, and
Alexander Affleck, our executors, administrators, and assigns, His especial
license, that we, the said Thomas Parker, William Telfer, and Alexander'
Affleck, our executors, administrators, and assigns, during the term of
years therein expressed, should and lawfully might make, use, exercise,
and vend, within England, Wales, and the Town of Berwick-upon-Tweed,
our new invented "IMPROVEMENTS IN PREPARING AND MANUFACTURING FLAX,
HEMP, SILK, AND OTHER MATERIALS;" in which Letters Patent there is contained
a proviso obliging us, the said Thomas Parker, William Telfer, and Alexander
Affleck, 'under our hands and seals, to cause a particular description of the
nature of our said Invention, and in what manner the same is to be per-
formed, by an instrument in writing, to be inrolled in His Majesty's High
Court of Chancery within six calendar months next and immediately after
the date of the said Letters Patent, as in and by the same (relation being
thereunto had) may more fully and at large appear.
NOW KNOW YE, that in compliance with the said proviso, we, the said
Thomas Parker, William Telfer, and Alexander Affleck, do hereby declare
that our said Invention is, to prepare or reduce the said articles of flax and

page_text: hemp into the finest state of which they are capable for all the purposes of
manufacture, to which the same in such state are or may by any means be
applicable. And, further, our said Invention is also to prepare or reduce
articles made of flax, hemp, silk, wool, cotton, and other materials, after the
same have been in use, or otherwise, into the best state of which they are
capable, in order that they may be recovered and again made use of as
materials of manufacture, or for the various purposes to which the same
may be applied, by being prepared or recovered as aforesaid.
And in
the manner of performing all the said operations, or producing all the said
effects, various means may be made use of when it is understood what are the
ends to be accomplished, as intended by the said Invention; but, whatever
those means may be, they are hereby deemed included in the said Invention,
and comprehended within His Majesty's said Letters Patent.
The flax, or the waste or refuse of flax, may be taken in its rough state, or
after being heckled, or either before or after the process of bleaching, which
may be performed in any of the modes now used in bleaching, or that may-
become known or applicable to the bleaching of flax, or of any article made
thereof, and either before or after the flax is beat, or rolled, or softened in any
manner for the purpose of being reduced into a. state capable of being spun
by combs fixed upon arms to be turned as a wheel, with such a degree of
velocity as to break and separate the fibres as the flax is fed through rollers
to the combs, which are set with sharp pointed needles in one or more rows
on each of the arms; or the flax may be reduced into as nearly such equal
lengths as may be found capable of being spun to the best advantage, by
being cut with shears or any other cutting instrument, or by rollers, through
which the flax may be made to pass by the motion of any machine, the first
rollers through which the flax passes holding fast whilst is laid of by the
following rollers made with flutes, or otherwise, to meet and take the flax
.between them, as they are turned at greater speed, and so separating it into
the lengths for which the rollers are constructed, after which the flax may be
beat with rods, the better to prepare it for carding, which may be done by
one or more pair of cards, as it may be found to require, in order to bring
it into the finest state for roving and spinning to the best advantage. The
rollers that receive. the. carded flax from the last card or cylinder may be
placed at a less distance than in the cotton cards; and in drawing the flax
into rovings, it seems best to make the draught shorter than for cotton to
produce the most even roven and yarn, whether it may be spun upon any of
the principles of the cotton or flax manufacture. The hemp is treated on
the same principle as the flax, allowing for the difference in the fibres. And

page_text: in preparing and reducing articles made of wool into a state to be used again
as aforesaid, the first machine for this purpose is made with an oblong frame,
inclosed with doors on the opposite side for cleaning and taking out the wool.
A cylinder proportioned to this frame is set with rows of sharp pointed teeth,
of sufficient strength for the work, the rows at greater or less distance from
each other as the article may be found to require, and not in a direct line,
but slantways.cross the cylinder, the teeth inclining with their points the way
the cylinder turns, so as to strike the cloth or article to be teazed as it is
presented to the teeth in the most favorable manner for separating the threads
or yarn, such of the articles to be teazed as have been worn or used after
being washed or scoured, or otherwise cleansed and dried, to be spread on a
feeding cloth, made to the machine in the manner of the cotton carding
machine, and with an upper cloth of about one third of the length of the
under cloth, that by turning together and taking the article betweeen. them,
it may be sent forward in as smooth a state as may be to the rollers through
which it has to pass to the teeth of the cylinder, the last pair of which rollers
must be pressed together by a sufficient weight upon the upper roller to pre-
vent the article from being pulled out before the teeth have reduced it to
the state required. And immediately above the article to be teazed, as it
comes from between the rollers next the cylinder, a flat brush is placed cross
the cylinder to keep the article down to the teeth of the cylinder, and to this
brush a motion is given in any manner by which it may be moved by the
motion of the machine backwards and forwards, so that by a moderate regular
motion endways cross the teeth of the cylinder, any of the threads or yarn
which might otherwise fall between the teeth of the cylender, and escape being
teazed are displaced, and with the rest are left exposed to the action of the
teeth in čarding; and on the opposite side of the carding cylender, the rollers,
and rather below the cylinder, is placed a circular brush, to go at greater speed
than the cylinder, by which the produce of the article teazed is brushed off' as
it arises, and the teeth kept constantly free to produce their full effect. The
rollers next the cylinder, by being fluted and made to work into each other,
keep the article to be teazed firmer between them than when they are plain.
as small pieces of the article may escape without being sufficiently teazel,
these pieces are passed through a second machine, made of a smaller. and
larger cylinder, set with teeth at a small distance from cach other, and in
rings or circles or direct lines round each cylinder, so that the teeth in both
may work between each other without touching or striking against each other;
and the pieces to be teazed or carded by the last machine to be spread upon
a feeding cloth, in the same manner as in the machine before 'described, and
both to be made of such degrees of strength as the .articles to be teazed
But

page_text: require. The machines for teazing articles made of silk are the same in all
respects as those for articles made of wool, with the additions of rollers attached
to the silk machines, or upon a separate frame, with cutting wheels raised upon
these rollers, to work so close against the sides of each other as to cut the
article to be teazed into such breadths as may be required for being more
effectually teazed. Articles made of wool seem to teaze best when heated to
a moderate degree, as they are applied to the machines which, on the same
principles, are applicable to the recovery of materials for manufacture from
articles made of cotton, or of any other materials of the like nature, that
either have been manufactured alone or mixed with others, and in the nature
of the articles themselves capable of having the materials of which they were
made separated, teazed, and carded, so as to be again manufactured and made
use of. The machines, by being covered or inclosed, prevent both waste and
danger, and may be worked by any power, the manner of connecting them
with which, as well as the construction and union of their different parts, may.
be various, but which are so obvious as to require no fuller description to a
mechanic, who, knowing the use and principles of a machine, is capable to
form and apply the movements and the power to it.
In witness whereof, we, the said Thomas Parker, William Telfer, and
Alexander Affleck, have hereunto set our hands and seals, the Twenty-
second day of July, in the year of our Lord One thousand eight hundred
and one.

page_text: than the cylinder by which the article teazed or carded is brushed off, and
the teeth kept constantly free to produce their full effect. C, a pully that
drives the cylinder, &c. D, the rollers through which the articles to be
teazed pass to the teeth of the cylinder, the upper roller being sufficiently
weighted to keep the articles firm between the rollers. E, a flat brush placed
cross the cylinder, to keep the articles to be carded down to the teeth of
the cylinder, and also to displace them by a motion given to the brush end-
ways. F, a worm on the end of the cylinder A. G, a face wheel on the end
of one of the rollers D. H, the feeding cloths, also represented by Fig. 2,
or the under cloth a. The articles to be teazed are spread, in order to be
drawn under the upper feeding cloth b, by which they are conveyed smooth
to. the rollers, and through them to the teeth of the cylinder. I, a side view
of the frame.
Fig. 3, rollers attached to the same machine, or placed on a separate frame,
with cutting wheels raised on the rollers to cut articles of silk into breadths
required, in order to their being teazed.
THO. PARKER.
WILLIAN TELFER. ALEX AFLECK.
William Lawrie, of the City of Glasgow, in the County of Lanark, in that
part of Great Britain called Scotland, Notary Publick, maketh oath and saith,
that he did see Thomas Parker, William Telfer, and Alexander Affleck, in
the deed poll hereunto annexed named, sign, seal, and as their act and deed
in due form of law, deliver the said deed poll in the presence of Alexander
Morrison, clerk to him this deponent, and this deponent. And that the names
Thomas Parker, William Telfer, and Alexander Affleck, appearing to be set
and subscribed at the foot of the said deed poll as the parties executing the
same, and the names of the said Alexander Morrison and William Lawrie
subscribed to the said deed poll as witnesses attesting the due execution of
the same, are of the respective proper handswriting of the said Thomas Parker,
William Telfer, Alexander Affleck, and this deponent,
TIM T
Sworn at Glasgow, the Twenty-third
day of July 1801, before me,
JOHN HAMILTON,
Lord Provost & Chief Magistrate.
TIM T