T The opening room where the fiber is made ready for the preparation machinery is a reminder of the days when all rope-making processes were hand work. The bales are first opened up. In the case of Manila this means cutting away the straw matting put on to protect the fiber in shipment. Then the hanks which are packed in various ways—sometimes doubled, sometimes twisted—are taken out and straightened and the band at the end of each hank removed.

No machinery has yet been perfected for doing the work just described, but the first of the preparation processes, a short step beyond, tells quite a different story. Here the hanks of such fibers as require a special cleaning treatment are placed on fast-working hackling machines which comb away most of the snarls, loose tow and dirt.

At this point hard fibers—Manila, Sisal and New Zealand—are usually oiled to soften them and to make them more workable for the operations that follow. The oil, furthermore, acts as a preservative. It is a matter of importance to the buyer, however, that the fiber should not be too heavily oiled, for that merely increases the weight and cost of the rope without improving its quality. Our experts have determined through long experience the amount of oil that should be used to best serve the interests of both manufacturer and buyer, and have perfected a process which insures a perfect distribution over all the fibers, while frequent tests on each machine, in which definite quantities of fiber are weighed before and after oiling, prevent any excess.

The quality of oil used is also important, for grades containing acids have a harmful effect on all vegetable fiber. We compound our own oils and we also take great care to prevent acids from entering our grounds or factories and so coming in contact with our products.

Long ago the Plymouth Cordage Company learned that in the methods employed in the preparation of fiber for spinning lay one of the secrets of fine rope-making. To secure a more effective and special treatment in this process, we have added to the regular machines many improvements of our own. So highly perfected is the apparatus that by machine work entirely the separate hanks of fiber are combed and elongated into a soft, continuous sliver of any size desired and of convenient length, glossy in appearance, perfectly clean, and with each fiber lying as nearly as possible in the straight position which gives it maximum strength. These operations, in which the entire character of the comparatively short vegetable fiber changes seemingly, are wholly a development of modern rope-making, since in the days of hand spinning no sliver was necessary.

The machines are arranged in series, usually as follows: a first and second breaker, a coarse and a fine spreader and a draw frame. The treatment is varied to suit the particular requirements of different hemps or ropes by a prolonging or shortening of the series and by the adjusting of individual machines, but the method is always essentially the same.

The purpose of the first breaker is to form the primary sliver or “roping” as it is sometimes called. The hanks of fiber—somewhat matted if they have been oiled—are fed by hand into the machine, several at a time. Steel pins fitted to a slowly revolving endless chain grasp the mass while a second set of pins, moving more rapidly, draws out the individual fibers and combs them into a continuous form.

The operations which follow are very similar. A number of “ropings” are allowed to feed together into a first, slowly revolving set of pins and are drawn out again by a high-speed set into a smaller sliver, the pins becoming finer on each succeeding machine until the draw frame is reached. Here the fiber is pulled from a single set of pins between two rapidly moving leather belts called aprons. On all of these machines the fiber passes between rollers as it goes onto and leaves the pins and the sliver is given its cylindrical form by being drawn through a circular opening.

A finished sliver must conform to the special size desired for spinning. Different sizes are secured by changing the number of “ropings” which are allowed to feed into the fine spreader. When “rule of thumb” standards of measurement were practiced the size of the sliver was tested by the number of turns which could be clasped in the hand between the ends of the thumb and forefinger. If the workman’s hand chanced to be different from the official hand, he made allowances accordingly. At best this was a rough and ready method, but through long practice the men could become surprisingly expert. Mechanical grips or clasps are now used because they are more convenient and afford greater accuracy.

The wonder of modernism in rope-making is nowhere more striking than in the preparation room. To pass from one end, where the raw hemp is received just as it left the hands of the native Filipino laborer with his crude methods, down through the long rows of machines to the draw frames from which the sliver is delivered in a form that can be likened to a stream of molten metal, is to cover decades of inventive genius and mechanical development.

The mechanism performs its work so accurately that at first glance the man feeding the fiber into the machine and all the other men, busy about their various duties, would appear to be playing very minor parts in modern rope-making. In reality, expert workmanship and watchfulness are very important factors. Good rope depends no more upon scientific machine processes than upon ceaseless attention to the little details. And the attention paid to the details of the preparation room is especially important.

A rope expert once said, “Any manufacturer can make rope—it is a simple operation; but very few can make good rope because few are willing to devote the necessary amount of pains to each of the little operations in the process.”