a4 MARINE REVIEW. [March 18, ROPE. BY MR. J. W. WALTON. Instead of issuing its usual calendar this year the Upson-Walton Co, of Cleveland has published a little book upon the subject of "Rope, which is so large a part of its business. The book is very instructive and is splendidly illustrated and printed throughout. The marginal notes are in red. It bears a special interest because the book is the work of Mr. J. W. Walton, a member of the firm, who has spent a great deal of time upon it. Certainly he has pursued the subject of rope until it is lost in the twilight of antiquity. Mr. Walton surmises that maybe the apes, some species of which swing from tree to tree by means of vines and supple branches, or make living cables by climbing over each other's bodies, were the first rope makers. It is clear that the primitive races, however savage, must have felt the necessity of cordage. For the purpose of crossing streams the ancient Peruvians used to twist together the strong fibers of the maguey, forming ropes sometimes as large as a mans body. : Ne Walton briefly traces the history of rope from the Egyptian period down to the present time, enriching the narrative throughout with quotations from the literature of the world. But rope, though of an antiquity reaching almost, if not quite, to the earliest ages of man, has until within a century and a half escaped the attention of mechanical in- ventors. The primitive wheel, the workman, with a bundle of hemp strung around his waist, and the slow, laborious and imperfect operation laying and twisting the strands by manual labor have been seen in Cleve- land by Mr. Walton and may still be noted in remote places. The yarns supported at intervals upon "stake-heads" are stretched the full length of the rope-walk, then divided into the number required, afterwards slowly twisted together into strands and these into ropes. When cables were required our forefathers used to twist ropes together until the desired size was attained. Of course the result was a rope of strands unevenly formed and thus of unequal strength. The ideal rope of any given material is one in which every fiber sustains its proportionate strain and in which the tension is so perfect that if the rope were suspended its full length, with a heavy weight attached to the bottom, the right-handed twist of the strands would exactly counterbalance the left-handed twist in the indi- vidual yarns or wires and the weight would not turn. This perfect rope is yet to be made but such is the progress of modern methods that very close results have been attained. The late war with Spain, which has brought into our lap the sole source of supply of Manila hemp, has caused great interest in the subject of rope making. Foremost among the rope fibers must be placed the Musa textilis, known to the Filipinos as Abaca and to the world at large as Manila hemp. It is really a species of plantain of which the species best known in the United States is the banana, which it very closely resembles. Although there is great similarity between the products of Cuba and of the Philippines, where sugar and tobacco are the staples, it is a singular fact that all attempts to cultivate Manila hemp in the West Indies have signally failed. The fiber is white, lustrous, easily separated, stiff and very tenacious. It is also very light; indeed no other fiber ever discovered is so well adapted to the various uses to which Manila rope is put, especially 'for the running ropes of vessels. The cultivation of the plant is simple. On exposed level lands the plants do not thrive very well and in marshy ground not at all. The necessary conditions seem to be shade, abundant moisture and good drainage. It requires the product of five or six acres to produce a ton of fiber at a cutting. Plantations are estimated to yield, under good management, as high as 30 per cent. on their investment. No other vegetable fiber is so tenacious as Manila hemp. No machine has yet been invented for extracting the fiber from the plant. "Many attempts have been made," said Mr. Walton, "to do this by improved machinery, but thus far they have been unsuccessful. If the entire length of fiber in a strip of bast could, bear the strain of full ten- sion, instead of its having to be wound around a cylinder, or the opera- tor's arm, then a machine could be contrived to do the work. In making telescopic lenses, in cleaning Manila hemp and in the work of charity the human touch seems to be essential." After the native workman has marketed his hemp it is put into bales of about 270 lbs. each, so that it can reach the ship. This is done by means of bullock teams, and especially by crude native boats, called cascoes. This method of lighterage is so antiquated and cumbersome that a com- pany has recently been formed, called the Philippine Transportation & Construction Co., of which Mr. Henry F. Lyman, secretary of the Upson- Walton Co. is president, for the betterment of those intolerable conditions. A fleet of nineteen steel boats, formerly running from Cleveland to New York through the Erie canal, are now on their way to the Philippines. Manila hemp constitutes more than one-third of the export trade of the Philippine islands. During the past five years more than one-half of the total product has come to this country, about four-tenths have gone to Great Britain and the continent. The normal supply is about 850,000 bales, or 230,000,000 Ibs. Second in importance among the great vegetable fibers of the world is that commonly known as sisal. A native of Mexico, it was named for a seaport in northern Yucatan. From 1,000 to 1,500 lbs. per acre is a com- mon annual yield, the number of plants being about 650, averaging thirty- three leaves to the plant. Growers expect to clean from 50 to 70 lbs. of fiber from every 1,000 leaves. The crop may be relied upon with almost complete certainty. The principal port of shipment from Mexico for sisal fiber is Progresso on the north coast of Yucatan. The city owes its present superiority almost entirely to the above trade. During the year 1901, 515,358 bales of the value of $13,500,000 were exported, principally to New York. _ Jute is essentially a product of India. It is planted annually in as wet a soil as can be used. A large quantity is being consumed of late in India for the manufacture of burlap. The jute industry is constantly growing. oe _ PROCESSES OF MANUFACTURING ROPE. - In what follows the description of the process of manufacture of rope applies almost 'exactly to either manila or sisal, as the process' of manu- facturing' 'the tope is almost identical. Pe machinery used: in the ng! manufaeture of rope is'divided, according: t the operations to be' 'per- ned. into four general classes, namely, preparation, spinning, forming ah aviae: 'The preparation machinery may be divided into two classes-- the drawing machines, single chains, and the heckling machines, or break- ers, which are double-chain machines. The hemp is received in tightly compressed bales, which are taken to the opening room where the lash- ings are cut from the bales, and the hemp, which is packed in heads or hands, is taken out and each bunch untied and shaken out thoroughly. ° It is then passed through a softening machine, consisting of from six to ten bars of heavy fluted iron rollers. An oil sprinkler at the head of this ma- chine enables the operator to distribute over the hemp a quantity of oil, varying according to the amount of hemp, as well as to the uses to which the yarns or rope are to be put. The hemp 1s softened and the fiber sep- arated, and is now ready for the heckling or combing process. In the case of manila, owing to the fineness or softness of the hemp at thé top, the fibers are not separated, but are bunched together into a towy mass. In order to separate the fiber and remove the tow, an opera- tion termed "scutching" is introduced. A bundle of hemp is seized at the middle of its length, and the top end thrown against the swift revoly- ing cylinder. This rim is thickly studded with steel pins or blades about 4 in. long, being held so that the seed end comes in contact with the rapidly moving pins, the hemp is teased out, the fibers are straightened, and the tow removed from the hemp and thrown from the cylinders by centrifugal force. The hemp is fed to a breaker, or a double-chain ma- chine, one chain traveling very much faster than the other, the relative speeds of the two chains being about ten to one. A chain is an endless combination of bars linked together, the dis- tance between each two bars being equal. The bars are of round iron, varying in diameter from % to 1% in., and are studded with pins, which vary in length, thickness and distance in about the same proportion as the bars. The heavier the bar, the coarser the pin, and vice versa, being largest at the beginning of the preparation, and decreasing in size on each successive working machine. At each end of the bar is a "dog," which is moved through guide bars in such a way as to keep the pins in a vertical position. The chains are moved by means of a carrier wheel, consisting of from five to ten pinions. The carrier is connected to the motive power by gearing, thus permitting changes in the speed of the chain to 'be made. The single-chain machine, or drawing frame, consists of a chain and a pair of fluted iron rollers placed close to one end of the chain. These rollers, or drawing rolls, as they are called, have a speed of four to six times that of the chain, and in consequence draw a body of hemp on the chain into a sliver four or six times the original length. The breakers are heavier and stronger than the drawing frames, and have, in addition to the chain and drawing rolls described above, a second chain, moving at from one-sixth to one-tenth of the speed of the fast chain, or the chain nearest the head. These two chains, one moving six or-ten times faster than the other, heckle, or comb, out the hemp into the sliver, made up of the hemp ~ fibers all extending in the same direction, the hemp being firmly imbedded on the slow chain and the pins of the fast chain passing through each operation as presented. The fiber is straightened out, and in each revolu- tion of the fast chain a body of hemp is drawn into a sliver of ten times the original length. Naturally, this sliver is not even or uniform through- out its length, due in most cases to irregular feeding, and also to unequal softening of the hemp. To correct the inequalities, six or eight slivers are fed on the slow chain of the second breaker, which operation further com- pletes the separation and straightening of the fiber, and at the same time makes the sliver more uniform throughout its length. The subsequent operations are essentially the same as described above; six, eight or ten slivers are placed behind machines consisting of a slow and fast chain. The bars in these chains are in each successive working brought closer to- gether, and also are finer and the distance between each two made smaller in each case. Sisal receives from five to eight and manila from four to six workings on the double-chain machines. The sliver is then considered sufficiently even, and the fiber soft and elastic. A number of such slivers are placed back of the drawing frame, or single-chain machine, to be drawn to a size which will admit of its being spun into yarns or threads of 300 to 650 ft. to the pound, and sometimes even longer. The drawing frame is made up of a chain studded with fine pins, and in place of a fast chain is a pair of fluted iron rollers with a speed of four to five times that of the chain. The difference in speed will reduce the bulk of the slivers to one-fourth or one-fifth the original size, by drawing them to the single sliver four or five times the original length. After one or two workings on the drawing frames, the sliver is ready for the finish- ing machine, where the hemp is finally reduced to a condition ready for spinning. After the last operation on the finishing machines the sliver is run into cans, which are then taken into the spinning or jenny room, where it is spun or twisted into yarn of any desired size. ; The jenny spins and winds the yarn on spools or bobbins, holding about 10 lbs. of yarn or threads. The bobbins are sent to the rope-walk, or rope-machine room, to be made into rope. Rope of a diameter of 34-in. or less is commonly made on rope machines. Rope of larger sizes used formerly always to be made on rope-walks, but now rope of any size is made on machines, and the product of the machine is equal in every respect to the product of the rope-walk rope. The size of the rope de- termines the number of threads necessary to make it, up to, say twenty- one thread, or ¥%-in. diameter. One-third of the number of threads are twisted into a strand where three-strand rope is wanted, and one-quarter of the number when a four-strand rope is required. These strands are called readies. Above, say twenty-one thread, or %-in. diameter, the number of yarns in a ready depend upon the size of the yarns used to make same, and vary with different manufacturers, as some use a larger size yarn than others. The readies are made on a machine called a former, and when finished, either three or four former reels containing the readies are taken out and put into the rope-making machine, where they are lai up into either three or four-strand rope, as required. In a rope-walk the bobbins are mounted upon a rack; the required number of threads to make a strand are passed through the same number of holes in a perforated plate to and through a trumpet-shaped t fastened to a' hook on the forming machine. a e , ¥ tered to This hook can be g