NEW CLOTHES PEGS

Press, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 26031, 7 February 1950, Page 4

NEW CLOTHES PEGS

WORK OF WOOLSTON WOMAN BACKYARD FACTORY About two years ago a Woolston woman began making a special typ« of clothes peg as a hobby. .To-day, although she still works in a shed in the backyard of her home, and looks after her house, she has an industry which cannot cope with the demand for her products. Her husband is an engineer, and helped a man who designed a new type of clothes peg—one which resembles the orthodox peg with a wire spring, but which requires no pressure to fix it or release it. Later, there was an agreement about the rights of manufacture and sale, and the engineer and his wife now have the rights of manufacture in New Zealand and the rights of sale anywhere in the world. Because her husband was not particularly interested in making and marketing the clothes pegs, the woman began manufacturing herself in her spare time, using improvised machinery designed and built by her husband. An ingenious machine is used W bend the wire springs and any sharp edges are ground down before the sprifigs are spray painted. Dressed white pine planks go into one end of another machine and emerge as two pieces of the peg. ah the shaping being done in one operation. Afterwards they are put in a revolving drum to remove roughness. The final assembly of the pegs is done by hand, often in front of the fire in the home, and even friends of the family sometimes find themselves assembling pegs.