THE MANUFACTURE OF BROOMS 



57 



is taken and treated precisely the same way, and 

 then finally another handful. Each handful consists 

 of six or eight stalks, and they should be placed 

 smoothly and close together under the wire. The 

 wire is bound evenly around the stalks until there 

 is sufficient to hold the broom firmly together, when 

 it is fastened with a tack as at the commencement. 

 The pounder is constantly used to pack the brush. 



The broom is now round in form, and must 

 be placed between a pair of clamps and securely 

 stitched. When the stitch- 

 ing has been completed 

 the broom is removed 

 from the clamps and 

 trimmed by means of a 

 clipping machine, shown 

 in Figure 23. 



In the large factories 

 the broom-corn is taken 

 directly from the bale and 

 fed into a sizer similar to 

 the one shown in Figure 

 20. This machine cuts 



off the extra lengths of stalks and distributes each 

 size of corn into separate compartments, sorting it 

 into seven lengths, from eleven inches upward. One- 

 eighth horsepower is required to operate a machine 

 which will size from 1,000 to 1,500 pounds of brush 

 a day. A broom-winding machine such as used in 

 large factories is shown in Figure 21. A good 

 broom maker, with the aid of a boy, can wind five 

 hundred brooms per day with this equipment. 



Fig. 23. Clipper for trimming the 

 ends of the brooms. 



