FARMER’S WOOL TABLE

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31530, 18 November 1967, Page 10

FARMER’S WOOL TABLE

A South Canterbury farmer, Mr M. O. Westaway, of Pleasant Point, has invented a new wool table which he believes greatly reduces the walking that is needed in skirting a fleece and consequently will speed up wool handling in the shed.

Mr Westaway was prompted to put his mind to the development of a new table to cut down the amount of walking required after he built a new shed. He said he had been used to a table against the wall and with the conventional table he found that he was- doing too much walking and wasting time as a result The new table was built in his own workshop. It measures Bft by sft and has a wooden slat top. The prototype has a channel iron frame.

The table incorporates a folding section Ift 6in wide and this section is actuated by a quick push of a treadle or pedal under the table (by foot) so that a third of the fleece is flicked over. This means that the far edge of the fleece is now facing the man doing the skirting and it obviates the need for anyone to go around the other side of the table to do the skirting or for the operator to reach across the table to do this edge. This operation means that the fleece is also partly folded. A chain attached to the pedal or treadle ensures that the hinged section does not go over too far—-it travels to an angle of about 110 degrees —and a spring facilitates the movement and return of the folding section to ths horizontal.

Mr Westaway says that the table is designed for an internal shed—a chute or return race shed. It is important, he says, to get full advantage of it that it be used with the bins and press correctly positioned.

They had found that the necks and pieces bins should be at the head of the table and the press behind the operator. One man could do the whole job. The table was used in Mr Westaway’s shed last season, and it is his opinion that it could save half a man in the shed. The fleeces from about 400 big Romney ewes, which provided good average going, had been handled quite easily in a day with one man doing the skirting and one man fleece picking. They had done all the shed work, including the pressing. The table is now being manufactured commercially. The commercial version has a pipe frame and has folding legs for easy transport and storage.

Although the table is of quite simple design, Mr C. A. Barlow, merchandise manager of Dalgety and New Zealand Loan in Timaru, said that in his 43 years selling such equipment he had not seen anything like this. Mr L. Galloway, sheep and wool instructor of the Department of Agriculture in Christchurch, said that in these days of depressed demand for wool it was necessary to strive to improve the get-up of the clip, and in his view this table had a very useful contribution to make to this end. One of his concerns foi some time had been that it was impossible to get an orthodox table wide enough to be able to throw a fleece on to it without the fleece hanging over the sides. The width of a table was governed by the distance a person could reach to fold the fleece. There were many occasions when two men could not be on the table and in the average New Zealand shed with two stands it seemed that one man did the majority of the table work.. The new table eliminated any overhanging fleeces and when a fleece was flicked back it could be easily

reached to be skirted and folded. Mr Galloway said he thought that the table would be used with equal success against the wall or out in the middle of the floor, provided that there was room. It could improve wool handling in many sheds which had narrow tables against the wall. The photograph above shows Mr Westaway with his table. The folding section is in the upright position.