LIME

Korero (AEWS), Volume 2, Issue 13, 3 July 1944, Page 29

LIME

By Lieut. F. A. Sandall, with illustrations by S/Sgt. W. A. Sutton

Up till lately my only acquaintance with lime was made standing on a trailer behind a caterpillar tractor and emptying 1 cwt. bags of lime into a hopper which dribbled it out relentlessly on to the paddocks. When your eyes are sore with lime, your hair and clothes stiff with it, and your back takes five minutes to get straight, you don’t care where lime comes from or where it goes to. But when New Zealand produces 7,000,000 tons annually of agricultural lime alone, one can’t by-pass the limeworks. Anyhow, it’s just another aspect of this production business ; it helps make New Zealand lamb, wheat, wool, and flax what they are. Lime began long ago . . . when the shells of dead sea creatures accumulated on the oceanbed. The mass solidified and was brought forth out of the sea when New Zealand first saw the

light. It is now limestone hills, but under the microscope the remains of marine life can still be detected. We take this work of ages and use it ; in some cases put it back where it first came frominto bone. Limestone outcrops are fairly plentiful. White or yellow rock, often grimy as if it were smoke-blackened. Nothing grows on it. Scrape the surface, and it is white beneath. Some day there will be a “ lime-works ” there. At the quarry stone is blasted out of ledges about 8 ft. deep by pneumatic drills and electric detonators and conveyed by chute, conveyor, or small railway to the works. It may even be trucked some miles. If the “ works ” are not at the quarry, a crusher is there on the job breaking the rock into fistsized lumps. At the works these are carried up a bucket elevator to a wooden storage bin, perhaps 10 ft. square and

20 ft. high. If it’s fine weather and lime is being carried faster than it can be worked (io tons an hour), this bin will hold the accumulated surplus. Slowly it is taken from the bottom of the bin by another elevator to a brick smoke-box, which feeds the crusher and drier. Inside the works this huge mechanism is the first thing your eye sees. A cylinder, about 50 ft. long and big enough to walk through, is turning over steadily. In two places round it are great cog-toothed rings, and into them work electrically-driven pinions electricity is specially suitable for this work because it has a “ steady ” drive and because a small motor can be put up anywhere in the building. If steam were used, there' would have to be a mainshaft and the power applied, where wanted, through elaborate systems of bevel gears. Right angles of iron bolted inside the cylinder carry the broken lumps up until,

passing over the top at each revolution, the lime is dropped to the cylinder-bottom, to be caught immediately and carried up again. It doesn’t just stay in the same place, however, for the cylinder is on an incline. Rising and ailing the lime moves gradually to the lower end. While it is being broken up more finely by this rolling motion it is also dried by a draught of hot air upwards through the cylinder against the movement of the lime. Once out of the bottom end, the broken lime is passed through a screen. What won’t go through is fed to a pulverizer in which six 32 lb. " hammers ” living round at

.incredible speed soon reduce it almost to dust. It is then put through another screen and elevated to a huge storage bin, some 20 ft. square and 30 it. high. Yes, the next job’s bagging. Heavyish work, but lightened to some extent by having weighing-machines beneath the hoppers and conveyers, chutes, and barrows to take the 1 cwt. bags (or more as the farmer wishes) to truck or railway wagon. And so to the pastures, where, as part of the grass, in a form assimilable by animal stomachs it becomes the blood and bones of our sheep and cattle. If it had no more machinery than this, however, the lime-works would not work for long. Lime-dust in eyes, nose, mouth, and ears won’t build bonny NewZealanders. It has to go through the

slow cycle of soil, grass, animal flesh, and human digestion before we can reap the benefit. So to prevent industrial disease from breathing limeladen air (remember Jurgis working on the fertilizer mill in “ The Jungle ” ?), big fans suck up dust, pass it through a water-shower, which collects it and deposits it in three water tanks, 18 in., 3 ft., and 6 ft. deep. As each tank fills, lime settles in the bottom, and anything left in suspension passes over into the next tank. One tank is cleaned daily, the second after two or three months, and the third annually or less. The dust, now clay, is dried and put through the works again. With luck, this time it will get to the open fields.

Soldier’s Examination Success.

Gnr. J. I. McEnnis, a New Zealand soldier serving in the Pacific, gained first place in Australia and New Zealand at the March examinations of the Australasian Institute of Secretaries and qualified for the Institute’s award of approved books to the value of Z 5 ss. The award is made to the candidate securing the highest average percentage pass in the Institute’s three final secretarial papers. The papers have to be taken at the one examination.' The minimum percentage necessary in each paper is 70, and the aggregate must be not less than 225. Gnr. McEnnis’s marks were: Subject K 74, L 89, and M 81, an aggregate of 244, with an average percentage of Bi|. Gnr. McEnnis matriculated in 1935 at the Wellington Technical College and entered the Civil Service in 1936 as a clerk in the Lands and Survey Department, Wellington. In 1938, when 18, he completed the final Accountancy examinations and the following year left the Civil Service to join the Wellington firm of Messrs. Watkins, Hull, Wheeler, and Johnston, where he remained until he went overseas early in 1942. Gnr. McEnnis took his Bachelor of Commerce degree at Victoria University College in 1940 and in the same year was awarded the Alexander Crawford Scholarship, granted annually to a graduate in Arts, Science, or Commerce to enable him to proceed with his Master’s degree. This degree he completed in 1941 with second-class honours in Economic History.