FULLING, the art of cleansing, scouring, and pressing cloths, stuffs, and stockings, to render them stronger, closer, and firmer: called also milling. Pliny (lib. vii. cap. 56) assures us that one Nicias, the son of Hermias, was the first inventor of the art of fulling; and it appears by an inscription, quoted by Sir G. Wheeler, in his Travels through Greece, that this same Nicias was a governor in Greece in the time of the Romans.

The asperities upon the surface of wool, and the disposition which it has to assume a progressive motion towards the root, render the spinning of wool, and making it into cloth, difficult operations. In order to spin wool, and afterwards convert it into cloth, its fibres must be covered with a coating of oil, which, filling the cavities, renders the asperities less sensible; in the same way as oil renders the surface of a very fine file less rough when rubbed over it. When the piece of cloth is finished, it is carried to the fulling-mill, where it is beat with hammers in a trough full of water, in which some fuller’s earth has been mixed, for the purpose of cleansing it from the oil. The clay combines with the oil, which it separates from the cloth, and both together are washed away by the fresh water which is brought to it by the machine.

But the scouring of the cloth is not the only object in view in fulling it. The alternate pressure given by the mallets to the piece of cloth occasions, especially when [7:10:243]the scouring is pretty far advanced, an effect analogous to that which is produced upon hats by the hands of the hatters. The fibres of wool which compose one of the threads, whether of the warp or the woof, assume a progressive movement, introduce themselves among those of the threads nearest to them, then into those which follow; and thus, by degrees, all the threads, both of the warp and the woof, become felted together. The cloth, after having by this means become shortened in all its dimensions, partakes both of the nature of cloth and of that of felt; it may be cut without being subject to ravel, and, on that account, we are not obliged to hem the edges of the pieces of which clothe are made. Lastly, as the threads of the warp and those of the woof are no longer so distinct and separated from each other, the cloth, which has acquired a greater degree of thickness, forms a warmer clothing. Knit worsted also is, by fulling, rendered less apt to run in case a stitch should happen to drop in it.

The fulling of cloths and other stuβ's is performed by a kind of water-mill, thence called a fulling or scouringmill.

These mills, excepting in what relates to the millstones and hopper, are much the same with corn-mills; and there are even some which serve indifferently for either use, corn being ground, and cloths fulled, by the motion of the same wheel. Hence in some places, particularly in France, the fullers are called millers ; as grinding corn and milling stuffs at the same time.

The principal parts of the fulling-mill are the wheel, with its trundle, which gives motion to the tree or spindle, whose teeth communicate it to the pestles or stampers, which are hereby raised and made to fall alternately, according as its teeth catch on or quit a kind of latch in the middle of each pestle. The pestles and troughs are of wood; each trough having at least two, sometimes three pestles, at the discretion of the master, or according to the force of the stream of water. In those troughs are laid the clothe, stuffs, &c. intended to be fulled; then, letting the current of water fall on the wheel, the pestles are successively let fall thereon, and by their weight and velocity stamp and press the stuffs very strongly, which by this means become thickened and condensed. In the course of the operation they sometimes make use of urine, sometimes of fuller’s earth, and sometimes of soap. To prepare the stuffs to receive the first impressions of the pestle, they are usually laid in urine, then in fuller’s earth and water, and lastly in soap dissolved in hot water. Soap alone would do very well, but this is expensive, though fuller’s earth, in the way of our dressing, is scarcely inferior to it; but then it must be well cleared of all stones and grittinesses, which are apt to make holes in the stuff Method of fulling cloths and woollen, stuffs with soap>. —A coloured cloth of about forty-five ells is to be laid in the usual manner in the trough of a fulling-mill, without first soaking it in water, as is commonly practised in many places. To full this trough of cloth, fifteen pounds of soap are required, one half of which is to be melted in two pails of river or spring water made as hot as the hand can well bear it. This solution is to be poured by degrees upon the cloth, in proportion as it is laid in the trough; and thus it is to be fulled for at least two hours, after which it is to be taken out and stretched. This done, the cloth is immediately returned into the same trough, without any new soap, and there fulled two hours more. Then taking it out, they wring it well, to express all the grease and filth. After the second fulling, the remainder of the soap is dissolved as in the former, and cast four different times on the cloth, remembering to take out the cloth every two hours, to stretch it, and undo the plaits and wrinkles it has acquired in the trough. When it is perceived to be sufficiently fulled, and brought to the quality and thickness required, they scour it in hot water, , keeping it in the trough till it be quite clean. With regard to white cloths, these full more easily and in less time than coloured ones, and thus require only a third part of the soap.