LOCAL INDUSTRY.

Manawatu Standard, Volume 4, Issue 134, 14 May 1883, Page 2

LOCAL INDUSTRY.

We are glad to learn that Oaniaru now possesses two establishments to turn out barbed wire. The manufactures of the Oama!ti Barbed Wire Company are already well known ; the other is a new venture. The North Otago Ti i>es says of the new wire: — " The latest addition to the market is a barbed wire invented some time a°ro by Mr Woodcock of this town, and now bein^ manufactured m considerable quantify by Messrs Woodcock and Wkst at their 'Excelsior ' factory m Tyne- street. This wire strikes one as being perhaps the most pimple m appearance of any used, and m its manufacture the simplicity i 3 no less apparent. The wire used is a single strand of No. 8, and the four-pronged barbs are cut from No. 13 size. The process of barbing- is all done by hand, twenty boys being employed at the fac» tory. The smallrsized wire is cut by a machine into the required lengths, the cut of the -machine pointing it at bot> onds ; the operator takes two of these lengths m a pair of pliers and hol'is them m position, while with a turn or two of an iron key he twißts them round the wire, stretch sdr horizontally from end t© end of the factory, the operation occupying a few seconds. Cn an average one boy turns out. a complete coil of barbed wire m a day, and the factory is at present turning out between three and fonr tons per week."