USRE4173E - Improvement in fabrics for the manufacture of shoes - Google Patents

Description

ENOOH YWAITE, 0F FRANKLIN, MASSACHUSETTS, Assienon or oNaHALr INTEREST T0 STEPHEN M. WELD;

Letters Patent No. 107,642, dated September 20, 1870; reissue Nil-4,173, dated November 1, 1870.

.The Schedule referred to in thele Letters Patent and making part of the lame.

To all persons to whom these presents may come:

Be it known that I, En'pcu WAITE, of Franklin, in the county of Norfolk and State of Massachusetts, have made a new and useful invention of. a new Fabric, and a Mode of Making such Fabric, and of articles made in whole or in part therefrom; and I do hereby declare the same to be fully described, as follows:

The said fabric is of comparatively short fibers of wool, or other material capable of being felted, made pounds of material capable of being felted, and about forty pounds of shreds of buckskin, or other fibrous material, and put into what is known as a rag-engine or paper-pulp grinder, and water is added, and, by the action of the engine or grinder, the whole mass is thoroughly mixed and reduced to a pnlpy or semipulpy state, after which the pulp so formed is to he run through a paper-making machine, and is thereby made into sheets.

These sheets, while in a wet or damp state, are submitted to the action of a felting-machine, so as to felt together the fibers of the material which are pro vided by nature with hooks or projections similar to those on wool, the felting being effected in any usual manner, after which the fabric may be fulled in 'a fulling-machine in the manner in which woolen fab-' rics are commonly fullccl, or in some cases the-falling may be performed upon the sheets without the inter mediate process of felting Sometimcsoneor more thin layers of wool may be applied to either oreaeh of the sides of each sheet before felting it, in which case the whole is united by felting or fulling, or bpth.

To form the fabric into a shoe-upper or other article, it is to be pressed into or on a mold suitably constructed for giving to the material the necessary shape, and heat is to be employed in or applied to the mold, so as to either wholly or partially dry the molded article while therein or thereon. v

By such a mode of operation, shoe or boot-uppers, and various other articles, may be manufactured to greatadvantage.

Such shoe-uppers, after being made, may be soled in any well-known suitable manner.

Felt. is commonly made from wool byfirst felting slivers or sheets of wool as they come from the carding-engine; and then sometimes by fulling after the felting operation, and as wool to be worked on a carding-enginemust have afiber of considerable length, wool of short staple, such as eloth-shearings, &c., has not hithcito been made into felt.

'By this invention all short fibers ofwool may be wrought into felt,- thus redncin g the 'cost far more than the quality of the goods is lessened.

Bapers have been made by admixture of wool and wool-fabrics with other fibrous materials and water, and reduction of the'mixture to a pulp in a rag-engine, the pulp then being made into paper on suitable machines.

But such wool-papers, though sometimes called felts, and used for roofing purposes, are not, strictly speaking, felts, asthey have not been subjected, previous to this invention, to either a felting or a fulling operation, or. both, alter leaving the paper making machinery.

1. As a new manufacture, a fabric, formed by making, with water and fibers which will felt, a sheet ,in the manner in which sheets are formedfrom paperpulp, then felting or fullin'g sueh sheet, or both felting and fullihg it. r

2. The process herein set forth of making the said new fabric. e

3. A shoe-upper or other articles, as made of such new'fabric in awet state, and by means of a mold or formerand heat and pressure, as set forth.

' ENOOH WAITE.

Litnesses: v

. J. B. Gnosny,

FRANCIS Gounn.

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