S I 
A machine of four stages is so high, as to reach through 
two floors of the mill, and for this purpose the upper floor is 
made with a large round opening, to admit the machine: this 
floor serves the people who attend the machine, and change 
the bobbins when exhausted, and also remove the finished 
silk from the reels. 
The spindles in the upper stages are usually devoted to 
the first twisting of the single threads for the organzine, 
and therefore turn the reverse way, as before mentioned : 
and as the silk is afterwards to be thrown, or re-twisted, they 
are drawn off from the bobbins by large bobbins of three 
inches diameter, and four inches long, instead of the reels. 
These bobbins are stuck six together upon a long spindle, 
situated horizontally, and turned by similar wheel-work to 
that which actuated the reels; they have similar layers to 
conduct the silk regularly upon the bobbins from one end to 
the other, so that the operation is not at all different. 
In many of the best silk-mills, they have abandoned the 
original method of turning the spindles, for the preparation of 
organzine, the reverse way, by making the action of the wheels 
upon the outside, instead of the inside, of the circle of spin¬ 
dles. Instead of them they employ two different machines, 
■ one for the first operation on organzine, and the other for the 
second operation, both of them constructed with the wheels 
withinside: but the motion of the two machines is reversed 
to each other. 
Fig. 5. represents a single spindle of a throwsting machine, 
which, though the same in its action as the great mill, is dif¬ 
ferent in its construction. G and H represent portions of the 
rails or circles of the stage which support the spindle, and a a 
is a part of the rim of the great wheel of the central axle. 
This wheel is not made in segments, as before described, but 
is made very truly circular, and covered with leather on the 
edge, that it may act with more force to turn the roller, t, of 
the spindle. The point of the spindle rests in a glass cap, 
supported by the rail G, and the roller, t, is always made to 
press against the rim of the great wheel, a a, by a small lever, 
d, and a string, which, after turning over a pulley, has the 
weight, c, made fast to it, to press the spindle always towards 
the wheel. In this machine, instead of the reel, the thread is 
taken up by a bobbin, K, is put into a frame, m, which 
moves on pivqts, and by a weight, n, is pressed down so as 
to make the bobbin bear upon the edge of a wheel, h, which 
is kept in constant and regular motion, by the same kind of 
movement which turns the reels of the great machine. The 
intention of this is, that the action of the wheel, h, to turn 
the bobbin, being communicated by pressure against the part 
upon which the silk is to wind, will be constant, and will not 
draw more when the bobbin is large and full, or less when it 
is empty, as must be the case when the motion is given to 
the axis of the bobbin. 
After the silk is twisted in a right-hand direction, if it is 
intended for yarn, or for dyeing; or in a left-hand direction, 
if it is prepared for organzine; it must be wound on fresh 
bobbins, with two or three threads together, preparatory to 
twisting them into one thread. In the original machines at 
Derby this was done by women, who, with hand-wheels, 
wound the threads from two or three of the large bobbins, 
upon which the silk is gathered instead of the reels, and 
assembled them two or three together upon another bobbin, 
of a proper size to be returned to the twisting mill. We 
have seen an attempt for a machine to perform the doubling, 
which is represented in fig. 4. The whole machine itself 
is very similar to the wmding-machine, fig. 2, but in¬ 
stead of the swift, the bobbins from the throwsting-mill are 
placed in front at A, fig. 4, two or three in a row. The 
threads from these are passed over the rail m, and beneath a 
piece of wood, n, both which, being covered with cloth, have 
the same effect to clean the silk by drawing through them, as 
the fingers of the winder. B is the bobbin upon which the 
two or three threads are to be wound together; it is turned 
by d wheel, F, upon which it rests, the same as the bobbins 
of the winding-machine; and D is the layer, which, for 
convenience, is in this case placed behind the bobbin, B; 
L K. 215 
and the wire-eye, d, which receives the three threads, is 
made to reach over to the front. The additional apparatus 
consists of a small piece of wood, e, which slides freely up 
and down, in a hole, through a fixed boar'd, f On the top 
of the slider, e, is an eye of wire, through which one of the 
single threads of silk passes in its passage from between the 
pieces m, n, to the bobbin B: there is one of these sliders, e, 
to each of the three threads; t v is a lever moving on the 
centre w ; the end t is immediately beneath the small sliders 
e, and the end v is formed to a hook, to catch into the 
notches which are made in the end of the bobbin B. A 
small counter weight, x, always causes the hook, v, of this 
lever to recede from the bobbin; but if any one of the three 
threads break, it suffers the slider e, which belongs to it, to 
descend upon the end, t, of the lever, and depresses the end 
of the lever, so as to bring the hook, », in a situation to catch 
a tooth of the bobbin B, and stop its motion. By this means 
the winding of the three threads together is rendered equally 
certain with the winding of one; for when any one breaks, 
the operation of winding on that bobbin stops, until the at¬ 
tendant repairs the broken thread, and puts the machine 
again in motion. We have lately been informed, that a 
machine for winding two and three threads together is be¬ 
coming common in the silk-mills, but we do not know if it 
is the same with this one, which however is not evidently 
impracticable. 
The bobbins, being thus filled with double or triple threads, 
are carried back to the throwsting machine, and are there 
spun or twisted together, the manner of doing which does not 
differ from the operation which we have before described. In 
this second operation the silk is taken up by reels instead of 
bobbins, and is thus made up into skeins. The degree of 
twist varies with the purpose for which the silk is intended; 
and the wheels which give motion to the reels are for this 
purpose adapted to the degree of twist which the silk is de¬ 
sired to have. The silk, being now spun, requires only the 
preparation of boiling to discharge the gum, and render the 
silk fit to receive the dye, and also to render it soft and 
glossy. The silk is boiled for about four hours, in a boiler 
.filled with water, into which a small quantity of soap is put; 
this operation dissolves the gum, which before could be felt 
upon the silk, and rendered it harsh. After the boiling, it is 
well washed in. a current of clear water, and when dried, will 
be found to have lost about one-fourth of its weight: at the 
same time the volume of the silk is sensibly increased, and it 
has acquired that soft texture and glossiness, which are the 
principal beauties of silk. This change is produced by the 
dissolution of the gum, which, in the first instance, was the 
only adherence of the fibre to form a thread, but by the 
operation of the twisting the fibres are firmly united, and no 
longer require the gum. It is also necessary, in order to give 
a fine dye to the silk, that the gum should be removed, be¬ 
cause it would prevent the entrance of the dyeing matter to 
the centre of the thread, and thus impair the beauty of the 
colour. If the silk was thus boiled before the twisting, no¬ 
thing but a fine entangled down or wool would be obtained, 
and it would require spinning, by a similar process to that of 
cotton, before a thread could be obtained. This, indeed, is 
necessary for that portion of waste silk which is drawn from 
the cocoons iu the first operation of reeling; also for those 
cocoons which are reserved for breeding, and from which 
the moths eat their way out by holes, which render it im¬ 
practicable to wind off the silk. This waste silk, when care¬ 
fully spun by aspinning wheel, is called spun silk, and the 
thread is not inferior to the regular silk which is wound off’- 
indeed, the winding off the silk into a thread united by 
its gum, is of no advantage farther than as a preparation 
•for spinning, from which process the thread obtains its 
strength. 
The silk is now in a state for use: if it is for stocking¬ 
weaving, or sewing, or if intended for weaving into stuff, it 
only requires warping to be put into the loom. The opera¬ 
tion of warping is to put together all the threads which are 
to compose the warp of the intended piece of stuff 1 , and lay 
them 
