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Show OL APPLIANCE AN METHOD 12 During the process of moulding the sheets of paper it was cssential that the fibrous material be keptfrom settling to the bottom o the dipping vat. Originally this was 1ccomplnhl.d b) the action o a pole in the workman, a means of agitaio still use in some Oriental mills. A slight improvement was mcr made b placing on the end of the polea wooden disc pierced with hole which increased the effectiveness of the stirring. Suggestions fo m ore efficient work cz ame slowly in the early mills, and cach step which now seems trivial, was no doubt welcomed as an ingeniou invention by the old craftsmen. It was not u.un the eighteent century that a mechanical 1g|[1mr was dev n this wen through various changes before the paddle- w]\ccl c1llc(11 "hog, was finally adopted and used nlmos\ universally The first method of supplying the vat was by carrying the ma cerated paper stock in buckets directly from the storage chest, most tedious procedure; it was not until the seventeenth centur that a supply by gravity was devised. T once visited a paper mil that had been equipped in the late cighteenth century, where th fibrous liquid had been conveyed to the vat from a large stone cis tern by means ofa long, winding wooden trough; the stock o pulp had been lified and thrown into this trough bya hug pper buckets ‘The vat filled to within a few inches of its brim with the dilute linen and cotton fibres which had been macerated under th stamping mills, things were in readiness for the actual making o paper. A workman, called a vatman, stood on a platform in fron of the vat, holding a mould firmly by its narrowest sides; aroun this mould was a removable "deckle" or frame which acted like shallow fence around its edges. (Moulds and deckles are describe in detail in paRr 1v.) The vatman plunged the mould, at an almos perpcndlcuhl angle, into the liquid substance, and when th ould was well submerged he turned it face upwards and lifte |
