774 SOAP.— Framing and Cctting.

After some hours’ repose, the settled waste lye isagain withdrawn. Lye of specific gravity 1T0 =20°Tw. is poured in, and the mixture is again boiled;by this it acquires a still greater consistence. Aftercontinued boiling for about three hours, it is allowedto deposit, and the waste lye is again drawn off.This operation is repeated once more, but withstrong lyes, care being taken to stir the paste whilebeing heated, and to allow only a gentle ebullition,so that the whole may form a homogeneous mass.

The soap at this stage begins to acquire firmness.The boiling with lye several times successively servesnot only to complete the saponification, but to washand purify the soap. That it may be perfect, it isnecessary to repeat the operation four or five times.As soon as complete, the fire should be withdrawn,and the mass allowed to settle and become some-what cool, and then ladled out and conveyed inbuckets to the frames.

Framing .—When the soap paste has remained inthe boiler a sufficient length of time to have becomepartially cool, it is ladled out into buckets or pails,conveyed to the frame-room, and poured into theframes to solidify.

The frames or sesses (Figs. 4 and 5) form whenjoined together a pile of rectangular inclosures,

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measuring internally about 45 inches by 15 inches.They should be very smooth, and so jointed as tofit closely together. When piled one upon theother, to the height of 3 or 4 feet, they constitutea tight square well fitted to receive the boiled soappaste. They are tightly bound together by clampsand screw rods, ef The bottom, a, is made of twolayers of planks ; in the upper one are four grooves,into which the projections, dd, which support thesides, fit. The cross pieces, cc, support the ends.

A cloth is spread over the bottom, to filter off thelye which runs out through the holes, g g.

Cast-iron frames, as a substitute for the abovein the manufacture of yellow soaps, are of lateintroduction. These latter are formed of fiverectangular plates, one for the bottom, two forthe ends, and two for the sides, so arranged andfastened together as to form a well or reservoirof the same length and breadth as the woodenframes, and about 5 feet in height. These framesare put together and taken to pieces much moreeasily than those of wood, and the good conductingpower of the iron considerably accelerates the cool-ing and solidifying of the soap. If the soap isallowed to solidify in the state in which it is runinto the frames it has a rough granulated texture,and is extremely hard. It is therefore usual to mixa small quantity of water with it in the frame, andafterwards agitate the mixture with a wooden paddleor crutch until nearly cold. By this means it acquiresa finer grain, and is not nearly so hard.

The soap having become cold and dry, and in astate to be removed from the frames, which may boknown by gentle pressure of the finger making noimpression, the iron screw rods which bind theframes together are removed, and each frame islifted off the soap, which is left a compact mass ofthe size of the interior of the frame. This mass isthen marked round with a kind of iron toothedscribe or dentier. The teeth are near or distant fromeach other accordingly as the blocks are desired ofsmall or large size. The mass is then cut by meansof a wire, inserted by the workmen in the track ofthe teeth, into slabs, and these are again subdividedinto bars. The usual size of the bars is 15 incheslong by 2-L inches deep and broad.

Various machines have been devised for cuttingthe lumps of soap from the frames into slabs andbars. One much used in this country consists of atable, upon which the soap is placed at an angle, sothat a hinged frame, provided with a number ofwires fixed at the desired distances apart from eachother, can be brought down upon it; the cut soapthen falls through the hinged frame in regular bars.

LeSAGE has patented a soap-cutting machine, inwhich a cylinder, lying in a horizontal position, butcapable of being raised into an inclined or verticalposition for the convenience of filling it with soap,is closed in front by a plate perforated with a num-ber of holes. The other endmf the cylinder is closedby a piston, which, when urged forward by thepiston-rod, presses upon the mass of soap, and forcesit through the holes in the front plate, therebymoulding it into sticks wdiose transverse sectionshave the size and form of the holes. These are cutoff from the cylinder by a rotating knife, or by awire moving vertically up and down.

The bars, by whichever mode obtained, are nextremoved to the drying room, and piled upon oneanother crossways upon slatwork frames, made ofwooden uprights and cross pieces, interstices beingleft for the free circulation of the air, which muchfacilitates the drying. The commoner kinds of soap