Carpets in Sheeps Clothing

Korero (AEWS), Volume 3, Issue 9, 4 June 1945, Page 14

Carpets in Sheeps Clothing

► A KORERO REPORT

WE went to Wanganui to find out how sheep-skins were made into rugs and carpets. We thought we’d better start at the beginning, so we paid our fourpence, and clattered out in a rheumatic tram to Aramoho suburb. The tannery was there. We met Mr. D. R. Bowie, manager, an anti-tank gunner who had been smacked up near the Sangro River, Italy. “ Glad to see you,” he said. “ Come right in and I’ll show you over the whole shooting-box.” Straight away, your nose told you you were inside a tannery. A pungent odour permeated the place. Skins, some white, some coloured, were piled alongside great tubs filled with water, and large manglelike machines. The concrete floor was slippery with water and clotted fragments from the skins. Upstairs we went to where the sheepskins arrived from North and South Island stores. One hundred and seventy were banded together in each bale, or, as it is known in tannery circles, " dump.” A brown-clad middle-aged man was grading them rapidly into separate piles. According to the texture and quality of the wool and pelts (skins), they would make either rugs, slippers, or coats. Without pause, the man in brown determined the destiny of each skin. Meanwhile, Mr. Bowie told us the works were tanning and dyeing about six thousand skins a month. He explained that in the manufacture of rugs the skin doesn’t matter much, but for slippers it’s important to use a sturdy skin which will

give a good suede finish. Women’s coats, on the other hand, can’t be heavy, so into them go light skins with attractive wool, women being what they are. “ That’s fine,” we said, “ but we think we’d better just stick to the rugs and carpets for a while.” “ Quite,” said Mr. Bowie. ” You’ll notice the skins here are more yellow than white, and they’re dirty in some places. So next we’ve got to clean ’em.” Downstairs we were introduced to two perpendicular wooden drums, io ft. in diameter. One wasn’t working, but the other, one-third filled with a warm solution of soft soap and soda ash, was rotating with 125 skins inside it. After forty-five minutes the skins would be tipped out, the wool scoured and spotless. But strips of flesh still remained on the skins, so most of this would be scraped away in a fleshing machine —a large mangle which had sharp edges set along one roller. ” Now you’ll find out where the smell comes from,” continued Mr. Bowie, leading the way to long wooden tubs, in which revolving paddles kept the pelts moving, and hurried up the process of tanning. “ The smell, of course, comes from the tanning liquid, made from wattle bark, which is imported from South Africa.” We asked what was the idea behind tanning ? Apparently skins are composed of millions of fibres containing a high percentage of water. Water means rapid decay. Tanning removes all the water from each fibre, replacing it with an anhydrous substance.

After nine days the skins, well and truly tanned, are passed on to a shavingmachine, rather like an electric razor, which removes the last remaining traces of flesh from the skins. After another wash in running water the wool is dyed to the shade required. The length of time depends on the colour. Pastel blue is only a matter of saturating for an hour, but heavier colours, such as burgundies and rusts, require soaking overnight. The fixing of a deep colour such as black, sometimes takes two days. The dyes, imported from England, are the same as those used for colouring cloth. “ How do you dry them ? ” “ Well, sun-drying would take weeks. That’s far too long, so we speed up the process with this big churn, called a hydroextractor. Inside it’s got a perforated drum, into which we pack thirty to fifty pelts. Then the power is switched on, and the drum, spinning at 800 revolutions to the minute, throws out- most of the water. Centrifugal force, you know.” This packing and spinning naturally crinkles the skins, so rollers smooth them, and the remaining amount of water is sundried out within a week. But by then the skins are stiff and hard, and difficult to work. So they have to be made pliable again. That’s the job of the staking-machine, a weird apparatus resembling an anteater. Its hinged jaws fly backwards and forwards, making great bites at the unfortunate pelt. The pelt soon yields and becomes soft as it is grasped between a roller in the top of the jaw and a U-shaped groove beneath. Now all that remains, as far as the preparation of a carpet-pelt is concerned, is to trim and give an even pile to the wool with an electric clipper. If the pelt is going to make slippers, however, it is given a suede finish by a revolving drum coated with sand-paper, and then dyed—red, green, or blue. The wool is mechanically combed, fluffed up, and clipped again. Surplus wool is sucked away to containers, and later sold for packings in mattresses and upholstered furniture. And that, said Mr. Bowie, was all, as far as he was concerned. We’d find out

how the tanned, dyed, and clipped skins were made into carpets in Wanganui. The rug and carpet factory, contrasted with the tannery, seemed a most sophisticated establishment. No water sent your feet skidding, no smell of tanning lay heavily upon the air. No machine even remotely resembled an ant-eater. Only the incessant whirr of electric sewingmachines blended with the “ Whistle While You Work ” radio session. Here the skins arrived from the tannery in colours ranging from rust to green, burgundy, blue, rose, off-white, fawn, and black. It was a simple matter to grade them into matching qualities for rugs and carpets. Girls with razors trimmed each skin into a rectangle, 32 in. by 23 in. You would imagine it would be only a simple matter then to sew them together, to the size of carpet required. But, a deplorable oversight in the eyes of the carpetmakers, the sheep chooses to grow no wool in a little area just below where the legs join the body. These callouses have to be cut away, and a triangle of woolly pelt is fitted, then sewn in. The skin is now a uniform woolly rectangle, and several of these, according to the size of rug or carpet, are fastened together with overlocking stitches on electric sewingmachines. Each sewing-machine has a reel of 9,600 yards of thread. A good

operator, sewing twenty skins together in three hours, uses up these 5| miles of thread in three days. When the pieces are sewn together, the rug or carpet is laid flat, moistened, tacked out, and stretched for twenty-four hours. This prevents any likelihood of buckling, or lying unevenly upon the floor. Next day the rug has felt linings sewn beneath it, the edges are trimmed, and the wool is given a final spruce up with a metal comb. Then at last it is ready for display in shop windows. At Wanganui, 250 rugs are being turned out each week. In Wellington a smaller factory, belonging to the same firm, produces 100 weekly. Carpets, of course, take more time, and are heavier and more cumbersome for operators at the sewingmachines. Yet these, too, are being produced as well, little more than one a fortnight it’s true, but, with the experience gained, the firm is planning for more rapid production. Carpets (modestly

limited to matching or contrasting wools) are built up from either 9 in. squares or from skins measuring 311 in. by 22| in. In the last-named size it takes twenty skins to make a carpet 10 ft. 6 in. by 9 ft., and it’s all yours for about —if you have the money, and if you’ve been lucky enough to get a floor with a house or a flat around it.