Hawser-Laid Hemp Rope in a Rope-Walk: Heckled, Hand-Spun Yarns, Optional Tarring, Laid With a Top (Tomlinson, 1854)

"The fibres are first spun into yarns, the yarns into strands, the strands into a rope."

Weigh out enough hemp for one yarn of 160 fathoms. Throw it loosely over the points of the heckle and draw it toward you, repeating until all the fibres are combed straight; a little oil on the points helps (he names whale-oil; fish oil here). Tie the combed fibres into a tow of about 3-1/2 lb.

At the head of the walk turn the wheel of whirl-hooks. Wrap the tow round your body with the bight in front, draw out fibres, twist them and hook the bight on a whirl. Walk backward down the walk (about 2 miles an hour), holding the fibres in a piece of thick woollen cloth between the middle fingers, feeding an even, flat skein with the left hand, and throwing the yarn over the rafter hooks as you go. At the foot, reel the yarn in, keeping it tight. Yarns run from 1/12 to over 1/8 in thick.

Warp 300 to 400 yarns straight and parallel into a haul about 100 yd long. Dip it in tar heated to about 212 F in a copper and drag it through a grip or gage that presses the tar in and wipes off the excess. The yarn should come out bright brown: too hot chars it, too cold leaves it black; a scum closing over the tar shows the right heat. Tarred rope resists wet but is weaker.

Count out the yarns for the rope and divide them into three on the bearers. Hang them on the hooks of the tackle-board at the head and the weighted sledge at the foot, stretch them tight, and heave the hooks round against the twist of the yarn until each strand is 'full hard', the sledge creeping up the walk as the yarns shorten.

Put the three strands on the middle hook and into the grooves of the top, with woolders and soft-rope tails. Force the top back to the sledge, turn the head hooks as before and the sledge hook the contrary way, easing the load so the top is driven forward and the strands close behind it into rope. Wrap the tails round the rope to steady the top, and mark the strands at each beam to keep the hardness even.

From Charles Tomlinson (ed.), **Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts** (1854), vol. II, "Rope" (checked on the archive.org scan cyclopdiaofuse02tomlrich, pp. 564-568). He names whale-oil for the heckle; fish oil is our substitute and labelled so. The tools are ours.