578 PIN MANUFACTURE 



Messrs. Pincoff and Co., of Manchester, brought into the market a garancin which 

 yields very fine violet tints without requiring clearing. The other colours obtained 

 with it are equally satisfactory. Pincoffin is a garancin prepared, and more especially 

 washed, with the greatest care. It is made as neutral as possible, and then exposed 

 to a heat above 100 C., by means of high-pressure steam. Under these circum- 

 stances, a certain quantity of brown colouring-matter is destroyed or rendered inert, 

 and the dried product immediately yields fine tints. 



PITTE-APPLE YARlff and CXiOTH. In Mr. Zincke's process, patented in 

 December 1836, for preparing the filaments of this plant, the Bromelia Ananas, the 

 leaves being plucked, and deprived of the prickles round their edges by a cutting 

 instrument, are then beaten upon a wooden block with a wooden mallet, till a silky- 

 looking mass of fibres is obtained, which are to be freed by washing from the green 

 fecula. The fibrous part must next be laid straight, and passed between wooden 

 rollers. The leaves should be gathered between the time of their full maturity and 

 the ripening of the fruit. If earlier or later, the fibres will not be so flexible, and will 

 need to be cleared by a boil in soapy water for some hours, after being laid straight 

 under the pressure of a wooden grating, to prevent their becoming entangled. When 

 well washed and dried, with occasional shaking out, they will now appear of a silky 

 fineness. They may be then spun into porous rovings, in which state they are most 

 conveniently bleached by the ordinary methods. 



PINES. A numerous family of cone-bearing timber trees. The wood, which is 

 extensively used, is imported under the names of American, Baltic, Dantzic, Memel, 

 Norway, and Riga timber, Swiss deals, &c. The New Zealand pine, called also the 

 Cowdie or Kaurie (the Dammara Australis), is not a true pine. 



The Pinus sylvestris. The wild pine, or Scotch fir, yields the yellow deal. 



The Abies excelsa. The Norway spruce-fir, the white deal. See ABIES. 



The Abies picea. The silver fir, a whitish deal, much used for flooring. 



The Larix Europtea. The larch. This wood is much employed in Switzerland. 



The Pinus strobtts. The Weymouth pine, is much used in the Northern United 

 States. 



The Pinus Australis. The southern pine, yellow pine, or pitch pine. Of this 

 wood nearly all the houses of the Southern United States are built. It is imported 

 into Liverpool as the Georgia pitch pine. 



There are numerous others, as the American larch, the balm-of-Gilead fir, the 

 spruce-firs, &c., which are employed in various districts for ship and house building, 

 but they scarcely require any special notice here. 



PIUEY TAIiIiOW is a concrete fat obtained by boiling with water the fruit 

 of the Vateria indica, a tree common upon the Malabar coast. It seems to be a sub- 

 stance intermediate between tallow and wax ; partaking of the nature of stearine. It 

 melts at 97 P., is white or yellowish, has a spec. grav. of 0-926; is saponified by 

 alkalis, and forms excellent candles. Dr. Benjamin Babington, to whom we are 

 indebted for all our knowledge of piney tallow, found its ultimate constituents to be, 

 77 of carbon, 12'3 of hydrogen, and 10 - 7 of oxygen. See OILS. 



PIN IVXAfr Id'ACM/ii jcE. (Fabrique d'epingles, Fr. ; Nadclfabrik, Ger.) A pin 

 is a small bit of wire, commonly brass, with a point at one end and a spherical head 

 at the other. In making this little article, there are no less than fourteen distinct 

 operations : 



1. Straightening the wire. The wire, as obtained from the drawing-frame, is wound 

 about a bobbin or barrel, about 6 inches diameter, which gives it a curvature that 

 must be removed. The straightening engine is formed by fixing 6 or 7 nails upright 

 in a waving line on a board, so that the void space measured in a straight line 

 between the first three nails may have exactly the thickness of the wire to be 

 trimmed; and that the other nails may make the wire take a certain curve line, 

 which must vary with its thickness. The workman pulls the wire with pincers 

 through among these nails, to the length of about 30 feet, at a running draught ; 

 and after he cuts that off, he returns for as much more; he can thus finish 600 

 fathoms in the hour. He next cuts these long pieces into lengths of 3 or 4 pins. A 

 day's work of one man amounts to 18 or 20 thousand dozen of pin-lengths. 



2. Pointing, is executed on two iron or_steel grindstones, by two workmen, one of 

 whom roughens down, and the other finishes. Thirty or forty of the pin wires are 

 applied to the grindstone at once, arranged in one plane, between the two forefingers 

 and thumbs of both hands, which dexterously give them a rotatory movement. 



3. Cutting these wires into pin-lengths. This is done by an adjusted chisel. The 

 intermediate portions are handed over to the pointer. 



4. Twisting of t/ic wire for the pin-heads. These are made of a much finer wire, 

 coiled into a compact spiral, round a wire of the size of the pins, by means of a small 

 lathe constructed for the purpose. 



