TROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 489 



straw is at the mill, so imperfect is the present mode of dressing 

 flax, that nearly one-half of the fibre passes into a refuse called 

 tow. The tow is of two qualities : the course worth at this 

 time only fifty cents per hundred pounds, and the fine worth two 

 and a half cents per pound. All of this tow, if in long line, would 

 be worth, at this time, twelve cents per pound. 



After flax is dressed, as above, the fibre must pass through a 

 subsequent hackling process, before it is reduced to a degree of 

 fineness suitable for spinning, and in this process loses, as I have 

 before remarked, from 40 to 50 per cent, which passes into tow. 

 This is owing to the defective principle upon which the flax is 

 dressed, it being impossible, by any mode now in use, to remove 

 the woody particles of the flax stalk without breaking or marring 

 many of the fibres, and entangling very badly those which 

 remain. 



The true principle upon which flax-straw should be relieved of 

 its boon is to break and free it simultaneously. The only prin- 

 ciple, or machine, now in existance, which will thus dress flax, 

 preserving the fibres perfectly parallel and unbroken, is the San- 

 ford machine. 



The principle upon which this machine works is this : The 

 flax-straw,, in a thin stratum, is passed through a pair of feed 

 rollers, one of which is elastic — the rollers allowing the straw to 

 pass through them at the rate of one hundred and sixty feet per 

 minute. As it passes through tlie feed rollers it comes in con- 

 tact with a cylinder and belt which are running (the one driving 

 the other) at the rate of eight hundred feet per minute, the belt 

 and cylinder being armed with teeth and scrapers, and arranged 

 so that the straw must pass between them — the bars or scrapers 

 and the teeth taking hold of the flax-straw upon both sides of the 

 straw, the set of bars on the belt striking the straw on one side 

 about an eighth of an inch in advance of the bar on the cylinder, 

 breaking the woody part of the straw very short, while the 

 teeth, on both cylinders and belt, keep the fibres perfectly 

 straight, so that most of the woody particles drop through the 

 bars. or scrapers on the belt (the belt being open for that pur- 

 pose). Tlie remaining shooves are scraped off, and carried out 

 out of the fibre, at the end of the machine, through channels which 

 the teeth keep constantly open. The construction of the ma- 

 chine is such that the flax-straw, upon being fed in, is first bent 

 one way, and then the other. The first effect of this bending 



