The Manufacture of Tobacco 123 



carried to the cutting-room. Very different is the 

 tobacco now from its state in the hogshead. The 

 hard, dry, shrivelled masses have become soft, moist, 

 pliable leaves, big and smooth. The old process of 

 compressing these into solid cakes for cutting is 

 obsolete except for navy-cut and flakes. Now the 

 leaves are piled loosely and bulkily in the trough of 

 the cutting-machine, which is similar in principle to 

 the old-fashioned chaff-cutter, though of course worked 

 by steam. 



Slowly-revolving rollers draw the leaves between 

 them, and compressing the loose heap of 12 or 14 

 inches deep into a solid cake of 2 inches, carries it 

 under the guillotine knife. This, descending with 

 rapid stroke after stroke, shears the tobacco-glacier 

 into shavings, which a revolving-drum carries forward. 

 The long, keen blade cuts from 300 to 400 strokes per 

 minute, and the loose, broad leaves fed into the end 

 of the machine fall away, in the shavings which all 

 smokers know, from the knife at the front. So stiff is 

 the resistance of the moist tobacco, and so essential is 

 clean cutting, that after five minutes' working a knife 

 is dulled and a new one requisitioned. To the mere 

 layman the shavings seem as fine as before, but the 

 experienced workman, noting the rather rough cut, 

 slips off the driving-belt, unscrews the long, heavy 

 blade, and inserts a newly-sharpened one. The 

 stoppage is merely momentary, for the ' cutter ' stops 

 the machine, unships the knife, bolts in a fresh one, 

 and has the machine shearing away tobacco again in 

 less than thirty seconds. 



The stroke of the knife can be adjusted to a nicety. 



