Putting More Wear Into Clothing

Chronicle (Levin), 1 December 1948, Page 2

Putting More Wear Into Clothing

DUNEDIN, Nov. 30. Experiments to test a treatmeut designetl to give increased wear and resistance to abrasion in woollen fabries, vvhich are beiug made in tlie New Zealand Woollen Mills Research Association's laboratories at the Uuiversity ot Otago, promise good nevvs for consumers. Laboratorv tests are almost comj)lete and in a nuinber of cases further experiments are being carried out IgV individual woollen mills in New Zealand. The treatment, whieh had been successful in laboratorv experiments, would have higlily beneficial results on the life of socks +'or example, said Dr. F. U. Soper, Professor of Chemistry at the Uuiversity of Otago and a director of the New Zealand Woollen Mills Research Association, in an interview. The proeess had been given extensive tests by research workers who had reported t'avourably on the resistance to abrasion shown by the fabries treated by it. Experiments made with two piei-es of the same woollen cloth, one treated and the other in its usual state, show signs of wear in the latter but no change in the former. The Otago experiments have been concerned solely with articles of clothing, but more extensive tests have been made in England where carpets, arnong otlier itftms, have been used to show the value of the proeess.