Democratic Sentinel, Volume 19, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 13 December 1895 — Weed Pulp Fruit Cans. [ARTICLE]

Weed Pulp Fruit Cans.

Wood pulp fruit can* are among the latest application* of wood fiber to a useful purpose. The preparatory machinery, the American Wood Worker tell* us. consists of a beating engine, for disintegrating the pulp, aud a compressed air pump and an engine for pnmping the fluid pulp. The soft pulp produced is placed on the tine netting and the moisture driven out by compressed air, the mesh holding the liber permitting the water to escape. The pulp, while yet in a soft state, is gathered upon a large roller iu sheets about Bxlo feet square, until about a quarter of an inch thick. It is then cut off the roller and tarried up on a canvas carrier to a drying chamber nearly 100 /eet long, through which it slowly passes, requiring about ten minutes to make the trip. When the sheet arrives at the other end it is partly dry aud may be handled readily. It is placed next between pressing rollers, then shaped into cans about as ordinary tin ones are, the edges being connected with a special glutinous matter. Then the cans are finished off in the machine. This is one way. but it makes a seam. Another mode, adopted later, in which no seam on the side is made, consists in taking the soft pulp direct from the wire netting and moulding it into cylindrical form, almut the length of a dozen cans, and keeping it on the hollow tubes until ready for cutting and heading.