The story of rope

In that building, long and low, With its windows all a-row, Like the port-holes of a hulk, Human spiders spin and spin, Backward down their threads so thin Dropping, each a hemp...

How many people have ever given a thought to the question of where rope comes from and how it is made, or realize what a variety of uses it is put to, and how dependent we are u...

Coming down to more recent times we find that rope-making had been going on for centuries with probably very little change, up to the time of the introduction of machinery and t...

In any manufacturing enterprise the question of raw materials is one of the highest importance. No manufacturer can become extensively successful without an intimate knowledge o...

The American cordage manufacturer is an importer; very little of the fiber entering into his product is grown at home. We have already seen how the principal cordage fiber--Mani...

While the fibers we have already discussed--Manila and Sisal--comprise by far the greater part of the raw material of cordage, we wish to mention in this chapter a fiber which,...

Who does not know of the tarred rigging which once meant so much to the rope-maker? Its very odor seemed to cling to the pages of seafaring books. Its use naturally declined wit...

In Part II we described the various fibers from which rope is made and pointed out the importance of expert knowledge and foresight in the buying of these raw materials. Purchas...

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...

Hand spinning, as practiced in the early days of the Plymouth Cordage Company, yielded a remarkably good rope yarn, but large production was very expensive and laborious. The le...

In the last chapter we described the spinning of rope yarn. Let us now turn to the process where, for certain ropes, this yarn is treated with the tar, the manufacture of which...

Before taking up the strictly modern machines so largely used now in the final processes of rope-making--the forming of strands, laying of common ropes and closing of cable-laid...

Unlike the ropewalk system of making strands, ropes and cables described in the preceding chapter, the factory method, so called, is a development of the last few decades only....

Modern rope-making ingenuity reaches its high-water mark in the compound laying-machine where the two operations of forming the strands and laying them into a rope are combined....