3168 WOOLLEN MANUFACTURE 



is the name of a process, in which the dried cloth is examined minutely in 

 every part, freed from knots or uneven threads, and repaired Ly sewing any little 

 rents, or inserting sound yarns in the place of defective ones. 



Teasling. The object of this operation is to raise up the loose filaments of the 

 woollen yarn into a nap upon one of the surfaces of the cloth, by scratching it either 

 with thistle-heads, calltd ' teasels,' or with teasliug-cards or brushes, made of wire. The 

 natural teasels are the balls which contain the seeds of the plant called Dipsacus ful~ 

 lonuni ; the scales which form the balls, project on all sides and end in sharp elastic 

 points, that turn downwards like hooks. In teasling by hand, a number of these balls 

 are put into a small wooden frame, having crossed handles, eight or ten inches long, 

 and when thus filled, form an implement not unlike a curry-comb, which is used by 

 two men, who seize the teasel-frame by the handles, and scrub the face of the cloth, 

 hung in a vertical position from two horizontal rails, made fast to the ceiling of the 

 workshop. First, they wet the cloth and work three times over, by strokes in the 

 direction of the warp, and next of that of the weft, so as to raise all the loose 

 fibres from, the felt, and to prepare it for shearing. In large manufactories, this 

 dressing operation is performed by a machine called a ' gig-mill,' which originally 

 consisted, and in most places still consists of a cylinder bristled all over with the 

 thistle-heads, and made to revolve rapidly while the cloth is drawn over it in a 

 variety of directions. If the thistle be drawn in the line of the warp, the points 

 act more efficaciously upon the weft, being perpendicular to its softer spun yarns. 

 Inventors who have tried to give the points a circular or oblique action between the 

 warp and the weft, proceed apparently upon a false principle, as if the cloth were 

 like a plate of metal, whose substance could be pushed in any direction. Teasling 

 really consists in drawing out one end of the filaments, and leaving the body of them 

 entangled in the cloth ; and it should cease and pull them perpendicularly to their 

 length, because in this way it acts upon the ends, which being least implicated, may 

 be most readily disengaged. 



When the hooks of the thistles become clogged with flocks of wool, they must be 

 taken out of the frame or cylinder, and cleaned by children with a small comb. 

 Moisture, moreover, softens their points, and impairs their teasling powers ; an effect 

 which needs to be counterbalanced, by taking them out, and drying them from time to 

 time. Many contrivances have, therefore, been proposed, in which metallic teasels of 

 an unchangeable nature, mounted in rotatory machines, driven by power, have been 

 substituted for the vegetable, which being required in prodigious quantities, become 

 sometimes excessively scarce and dear in the clothing districts. In 1818, several 

 schemes of that kind were patented in France, of which those of M. Arnold-Merick, 

 and of MM. Taurin freres, of Elboeuf, are described in the 16th volume of ' Brevets 

 d'Invention Expires.' Mr. Daniell, cloth-manufacturer in Wilts, renewed this inven- 

 tion under another form, by making his rotatory cards with two kinds of metallic 

 wires, of unequal lengths ; the one set long, thin, and delicate, representing the points 

 of the thistle ; the other, shorter, stiffer, and blunter, being intended to stay the cloth, 

 and to hinder the former from entering too far into it. But none of these processes 

 have succeeded in discarding the natural teasel from the most eminent manufactories. 



The French Government purchased in 1807, the patent of Douglas, an English 

 mechanist, who had, in 1802, imported into France, the best system of gig-mills then 

 used in the west of England. A working set of his machines having been placed in 

 the Conservatoire des Arts, for public inspection, they were soon introduced into most 

 of the French establishments, so as generally to supersede teasling (lainage) by hand. 

 A description of them was published in the third volume of the 'Brevets d'Invention.' 

 The following is an outline of some subsequent improvements: 



1. As it was imagined that the seesaw action of the hand-operative was in some 

 respects more effectual than the uniform rotation of a gig-mill, this was attempted to 

 be imitated by an alternating movement. 



2. Others conceived that the seesaw motion was not essential, but that it was advan- 

 tageous to make the teasels or cards act in a rectilinear direction, as in working by 

 hand ; this action was attempted by placing the two ends of the teasel-frame in grooves 

 formed like the letter D, so that the teasel should act on the cloth only when it came 

 into the rectilinear part. Mr. Wells, machine-maker, of Manchester, obtained a patent, 

 in 1832, for this construction, 



3. It was supposed that the teasels should not act perpendicularly to the weft, but 

 obliquely or circularly upon the face of the cloth. Mr. Ferrabee, of Gloucester, 

 patented in 1830, a scheme of this kind, in which the teasels are mounted upon two 

 endless chains, which traverse from the middle of the web to the selvage or list, one to 

 the right, and another to tho loft hand, while the cloth itself passes under them with 



uch a velocity, that the effect, or resultant, is a diagonal action, dividing into two 

 equal parts tho rectangle formed by the weft and warp yarns. Three patent machines 



