WORLD THATCHING RECORD

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 77, 1 September 1942, Page 2

WORLD THATCHING RECORD

NOVEL BRITISH MACHINE MILE OF RICK MATTING A DAY An invention patented in 1896 but stillborn because it was before its time has been produced in a modernised power-driven version to help on Britain’s agricultural front It is a thatch-making machine which enables ricks to be covered at half the cost and one-fifth the man-hours of the old method and is being made in hundreds for Britain’s next harvest. Straw fed into the machine is stitched into a continuous mat which is then 1 cut into convenient lengths, generally of 9ft or 12ft The manufacturing cost is about 3£d a yard (with wheatened straw at £4 10s a ton) and the production rate is from two yards a minute, although one farmer claims that he can make a mile in a day. The iob can be j done at any time of the year and the matting stored in rolls until required. | County Agricultural Committees are | finding that the machines solved many of Britain’s wartime problems. Un- ! skilled labour can be used either on the farm or in the committee’s central I depots, where lengths of matting can : be made and distributed to farms in I the locality. Ricks can be thatched im- 1 mediately they are built, for there are 1 no pegs to fall out and the normal • sinking only pulls the stitches tighter. ! saving the use of rick covers and avoid j mg the risk of weather damage. While , the rick is settling the thatch is com- ' pletely gale proof.