IN THE WOOL

Otago Daily Times, Issue 27568, 9 December 1950, Page 8

IN THE WOOL

Sorters’ Curious “Finds” Some of the young men working in Dunedin wool /stores for the first time have been surprised to find odd articles, such as old boots and bottle openers, in the wool received from the farmers. Recently in some of the wool coming forward for the double auction this month there was a rug, a bed mattress and some old sacks. Last season, one of the “ finds ” was a piece of a grindstone. While the uninitiated might jump to the conclusion that farmers are sending in such articles in an endeavour to give their wool more weight during these times of soaring wool values, anyone with any experience in the wool industry is aware that the wool is all sorted, reclassed and rebaled in the Dunedin stores—a service that the woolbuyers greatly appreciate. . One man with many years’ experience in the stores recalled yesterday finding no fewer than half a dozen shears in the wool in one season, and mentioned such other items as singlets, slippers, dungarees, and even pigs’ trotters that had been undoubtedly boiled to a turn! In the haste of shearing and baling operations in the woolsheds throughout the country, all kinds of things can become included among the fleeces. One shearer received his tobacco pouch back from a wool store some years after he had lost it in an up-country shed.