THE MAKING OF A MATCH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22670, 6 March 1937, Page 8 (Supplement)

THE MAKING OF A MATCH

A match is a very ordinary thing, isn't it? Just a little bit of wood with something on top. You strike, the match lights, and there's an end of it! It is said that five thousand million matches are used throughout the world every day, and scarcely anyone gives them a thought. Let us see ho*, a match is made. Poplar or pine logs are mostly used; apart from lubricating oil and paper, and the chemicals which compose the match-heads, practically nothing else is brought into the factory. The logs provide the wood for the matches and for the boxes in which they are packed, and fuel for driving the machinery. One machine cuts the wood into planks, of the thickness of a matchstick, 'and a second machine strips those planks into the actual matchstalks, which are chemically treated to prevent the wood from glowing when a match is blown out. After this the tiny sticks are dried 011 wire-netting in a kind of oven and pass on to what is called a "heading machine." This very cleverly sorts out the tiny sticks and fixes each one separately on to a plate, a series of which, passing over rollers, dip the ends of the sticks into the composition which forms the match-head. The heading machine stretches the full length of a large room, and the headed matches travel up and down for the full length of the machine, so that by the time they come to the other end and are pushed out into trays they are dry and ready for packing in the match-boxes. In 'most modern factories the machines that put the heads on also put the matches into the boxes.

Meanwhile other machines are busy putting the boxes together; one machine makes the insides of boxes, another makes the outside sections. Girls are there to attend to the machines, but the whole of the boxmaking is really done by the machines themselves, and the boxes are not touched by hand. When the machines have pasted the parts together, the boxes travel 011 an endless band through a current of warm air, coming out at the other end dried and ready for use." Here another machine takes them up, picks lip the finished matches and fills the boxes, turning them out ready for packing in dozens —and even this packing is done by machinery. Thousands of logs come to the match factory in the course of a year to lie cut up into matches, matchboxes and packing-cases, and thousands of millions of matches go out. Nothing is wasted, and even the waste chips and splinters are used as fuel for producing ttie gas which drives the engines that work the machines. There is naturally a good deal of waste wood, for if a log has a knot in it the wood round the knot is useless for making match-stems, which must lie perfectly straight-grained wood. Match-making used to be very unhealthy work, but some years ago a composition was discovered which made it possible, without using poisonous phosphorus, to produce a match-head which would strike anywhere. Now there is nothing poisonous in the composition, and match-making is 110 more unhealthy than any other industry. Children in search of amusement should see how many useful playthings they can make from empty matchboxes, or from "dead" match-sticks. 011 no account should unused matches, even "safety" ones, be played with; there is alwavs risk of fire.