MADE FROM CAST=OFFS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 8 July 1942, Page 6

MADE FROM CAST=OFFS

BRITISH ARMY BLANKETS. TURNED OUT SOFT, WARM & FLUFFY. The grey-blue blankets now going out in their thousand, soft, warm and fluffy, from the West Riding of Yorkshire to the British Army may well have sailed the seven seas in a previous existence. Not an ounce of new wool goes into them. They emerge from rags collected from all over the world —wornout uniforms, pullovers, old socks. Sorting out these rags is a highly specialised industry. The women and girls who do it can tell by a touch ii the rags contain cotton: should there be any in them it is dissolved by a special process, leaving the wool fibres intact. Dust and dirt are removed by a vigorous shaking and oil is poured over the rags to lubricate their fibres. A fast revolving cylinder covered with sharp locked teeth tears the rags into a woolly fibrous .mass. From then on the fibres are turned into cloth in the same way as new wool is carded, spun and woven on the machinery which in peace time makes tweeds, coating, blazers and flannels. It is hard to believe that the stiff, thin piece of cloth which appears will ever become a blanket with a soft, thick pile. It is first scoured in a soda solution and then it is milled and felted until it is just the width required. After a thorough washing in warm water the cloth is passed through a wringing machine and dried. At this stage the cloth looks more like a blanket. It next passes through the brushing up or raising machine which, has hundreds of tiny wire hooks that claw at the fibres and pull them up to give the “blankety” feel. Scarcely anything is lost in the whole process of manufacture: during the last hundred years it has become almost a fine art. The loose fibres removed by friction in the shrinking or milling process go to make flocks for mattresses. The waste left over from the finishing processes is no use as textile material: it is however full of nitrogen and goes off to manure the hop gardens of Kent and the orchards of Somerset. Even the oil and soap are recovered and. utilised.