130 



FLAX CULTURE AND PREPARATION 



112. Homer's Skeleton Drums. Some years ago this arrange- 

 ment was devised and patented by Mr. John Horner, Belfast. 

 The machine was manufactured and used in Austria. It was 

 constructed with the object of breaking the boon in as many 

 places as possible without the possibility of bruising it, as was 

 often the case, the inventor believed, with the use of fluted 

 rollers. 



The machine consists essentially of ten pairs of skeleton 



FIG. 80 



drums or rings, into the peripheries of which a number of 

 bevelled steel blades are fixed across the full width of the 

 drum thus leaving practically no bottom between the teeth 

 for the boon and fibre to bruise against. The upper and lower 

 drums are carried in fixed bearings. The pitch of the teeth 

 is coarse at the commencement but increasingly fine towards 

 the delivery end. The resultant action is to break the boon 

 without crushing or bruising the material. The invention is 

 interesting and suggestive because it embodies a fundamentally 

 new principle. 



Fig. 80 shows a transverse section of two pairs of skeleton 



