BRITISH FORWARD MOVEMENTS.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3127, 24 July 1922, Page 7

BRITISH FORWARD MOVEMENTS.

During and since the war close and most successful attention has been given in Great Britain to the subject of dyes. A British company, in which the Government is interested, developed a special line of dyes in connee lion with a very strong form of artificial silk, also produced by a British company. The manufacture of this silk had been impeded by the difficulty of dyeing it in fast shades; but that difficulty has now been overcome. The now dyes attach themselves to artificial silk, but have no effect on cotton; therefore a cloth in which cotton and artiiicial silk are mixed can have the silk dyed one color by the new dye and the cotton dyed another color by an ordinary dye. Further, it was found that tho final color of the fabric as a whole could be modified by a subsequent chemical treatment. Very good results are expected to follow from this development. During recent years more than one of the large electrical manufacturing groups in Great Britain has organised itself to carry out hydro-electric schemes on a large scale. Tho latest development is the formation by one of the leading armament and engineering firms of a special department to deal with complete water power development schemes in all their aspects —civil, mechanical, and electrical. This great firm is at present carrying out surveys, in many parts of the world, of schemes brought before it and considered by a powerful financial group with which it is working in conjunction . in the wood-working trades it has been customary to make joints by means of mortice and tenon. Joints made in this way require some skill on the part of the operator; and tho exercise of skill involves some expenditure of time. There is among both professional and amateur wood-workers a demand for an effective joint which can he made more simply and without the same degree of skill. This demand is met by the use of a joint in which one or more circular discs of three-ply wood arc embedded in semi-circular recesses cut in the pieces to be connected. The making of this joint involves the cutting of an exact halfcircle recess in each of the pieces to bo jointed. The ordinary saw cannot cut a recess of this kind, and consequently a British inventor has been induced to devise a special type of saw in which the operation can be quickly and accurately performed. A full half-cir-cular slot, Tin. in diameter, can be cut by this saw in ordinary wood in just over a minute. The machine is portable and can be put to work iu practically any position. The tarring of roads with the object of making them watertight and dustless, and therefore better suited for motor traffic, has become common in many countries. One of tho drawbacks of tarred roads is that the washings which drain off have a deleterious effect m\ f\sh awl also on certain vegetable crops. In Great Britain the trouble was so- serious that the Ministry of Transport formed a. special committee to look into the matter, and, if possible, advise some remedy. Careful experiments were carried out, and they proved that the washings from a. freshly tarred road were injurious unless they were diluted with about ten times their volume of water. Subsequent washings were much less injurious, hut when tho road begins to disintegratethe washings are apt to become again poisonous. The main recommendation of the committee is that roads which drain directly into fish waters should be treated with bitumen free from tar products, as the washings from such bitumen did not appear to have deleterious effects upon fish or other stream life. There was recently built in Great Britain, and for one of the British dominions, a steam winch of unusual power. This winch has three drums and is designed to hoist a total load of six tons at a speed of 200 ft per minute. It has throe barrels mounted loosely on shafts and engaging with them through friction clutches. The load' may be hoisted on any one of the barrels or distributed among the three barrels. Further, while one or two of the barrels are in use for hoisting purposes, the other or others may hold suspended a load u]f to six tons. Tiie winch is driven by a two-cylinder engine, and it will be used on a large harbor.