Excerpt from The Useful Arts and Manufactures of Great Britain

The engines for washing and grinding the rags consist of large vats or cisterns of an oblong form, rounded at the angles: they are made of strong wood, lined with lead or copper, or they are constructed wholly of cast-iron: each engine is about ten feet long, four and-a-half wide, and two deep, and will contain about a hundredweight of rags. Each engine has a partition down the middle in the di rection of its length, but not extending quite to either end this partition is also covered with metal sheet ing. The cylinder which washes or grinds the rags is fixed firmly on a shaft, which extends across the vat, and is made to revolve by means of a pinion fixed to its extremity. This cylinder, technically called the roll, is of wood, about two feet in diameter, and two feet in length. Round the circumference are firmly fixed bars or teeth of steel, parallel to the axis or spindle. Immediately below the roll is a block of wood of the same length, but of less breadth than its diameter. The upper surface of this block or plate, as it is called, follows the curvature of the cylinder, and is provided with a number of teeth, so adjusted as to present a series of cutting edges to the teeth of the revolving cylinder: these opposed series of teeth are not in contact, but may be brought very near together, or removed to a considerable dis tance, by adjusting the height of the roll; for the elevation and depression of which, provision is made on the outside of the vat.

The engine is provided with water from a small cistern at hand, which is kept constantly full from a pipe, and which is furnished with a strainer of hair or wire, to prevent any impurities from entering. When a due supply of water and of rags has been introduced into the engine, the roll is set in motion.

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