The Twine-Balling Machine: Slow the Ball as It Grows

"This binding-twine, to suit the automatic machinery, requires to be wound in unusually large balls, and in a very compact and regular manner, providing as nearly as possible a continuous cord without knots or irregularities". In the ordinary machine, "as the ball increases in size the rotary motion of the ball-spindle decreases correspondingly, so as to have the strands lie as close in the outer layer as in the inner layers of the ball, or nearly so." "In my improved machine I employ a similar hollow rotating spindle and fly-arms, and an inclining rotating ball-spindle mounted in a swinging head; but this swinging head is inclined in an accurate automatic manner and at the proper periods and speeds by a cam".

Push a cardboard tube onto a dowel as the core, held at a slant in a clamp so it can turn. Wind jute twine on in steep diagonal turns, turning the core a little after each pass so the turns spread round. Wind one ball turning the core at the same rate throughout, and a second turning it more slowly as it grows. Weigh and measure both, and compare how firm and even the outer layers are. Unwind the second ball and measure the twine length; compare with the notebook.

**Louis J. Hirt** of Brooklyn, Kings County, New York, assignor to McLaughlin & Loyd of New York, filed US 262,412 on 2 August 1881; it is dated 8 August 1882. He threads the twine through flanged fly-arms so it runs without kinking. **Honest limits.** The notebook treats the ball as a cylinder of steady packing and the surface speed as fixed. Real balls crown at the ends and pack differently inside. Speeds, sizes and packing are examples. Your measured balls are the measurement.