Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 3/Pipes of paper
PIPES OF PAPER.
Many are the uses to which the generic name of pipe applies. Water pipes, gas pipes, sewer pipes, drain pipes, warming pipes, ventilating pipes, organ pipes, medical pipes, blowpipes, reed pipes, tobacco pipes, pipe sticks, petticoat piping, and the pipes that Tom Pipes, one of Smollett’s heroes, played on as boatswain. My present dealing is with water pipes, which, after ranging through many varieties of material, are now being constructed of—paper.
Our earliest pipes for water were made of lead, like the bullets in the nursery ballad, from facility of manufacture, but necessarily they were of small size, owing to their facility of collapse. When the early water companies first laid pipes for general supply under the surface of the streets of London, no better materials could be found than the bolls of trees—birch and elm being the favourites,—which, in lengths of nine to twelve feet, were bored out to a diameter of about six inches,—one end hooped, and the other trimmed conically, so that each joint resembled the connection known as “spigot and faucet.” Extraordinary was the duration of these pipes, but they ultimately went out of use because their diameter was unequal to the constantly increasing supply demanded by the public.
And so water engineers took to cast-iron as the next material. The annunciation of this called forth many denouncers of the unheard-of new-fangled novelty, amongst all classes, but more especially amongst the washerwomen, who beheld therein the downfall of their trade from the universal iron-moulding of every article of personal, bed, or table, apparel. But the engineers persevered, and the soap-bubbles burst, which was not the case with the pipes. Cast-iron pipes then became an enormous manufacture, and were the subject matter of many patents, the problem being how to cast them thinnest, while containing the requisite strength. In their application to rain-water purposes, where no pressure had to be guarded against, marvellous was the thinness achieved—so thin that they seemed to be formed of two thin skins with nothing between, sometimes disintegrating in the acidulated smoke atmosphere of London in the course of two seasons. A new difficulty in the foundry was to keep the core central, so as to preserve an equal thickness of the metal,—a difficult thing, when the total thickness was less than the eighth part of an inch. One inventor resorted to a plan of forming these pipes without central cores, substituting for them a violent whirling movement of the mould, whereby the molten metal was flying by centrifugal action against the sides of the mould. But it does not appear to have been successful on the large manufacturing scale.
In France “iron is iron,” and every kind of scheme, save importing it from England, is resorted to to economise its use. So a certain M. Chameroy invented a plan of making water pipes of thin sheet iron, rivetted together like the funnels of common stoves. The insides he coated with mineral pitch to a beautifully smooth surface, and the outside with the same pitch mixed with small gravel pebbles. The iron was thus hermetically sealed against the action of oxygen. On each end of each pipe was cut a screw, one male and the other female, and they were connected just like wrought iron gas tubing. Pipes of this description have been in use in Paris for many years, successfully. But want of stiffness to prevent collapse is a practical difficulty, unless for small uses.
In England the system of “pot pipes,” or pipes of earthenware, have been largely introduced for drainage purposes. These pipes will stand sufficient pressure in each length, but they cannot be made in greater lengths than two feet, and the consequent increase in the number of joints is a great difficulty. But, apart from this, a very slight sinking of the ground is sure to break them at the joints by an internal leverage pressure, independently of the pressure of the fluid. The same difficulty occurs with the glass pipes which have been attempted. In fact, a permanent pipe cannot be made of brittle material, and its brittleness is one very serious objection to cast-iron, apart from the consideration of its objectionable weight in transport. In streets vibrating beneath rolling carriages, cast-iron pipes frequently break, and it has been stated, that in the Australian Waterworks, the breakage in transport and allocation has amounted to as much as from twenty to twenty-five per cent., a very serious addition to the cost.
Impressed with these serious difficulties, M. Juloureau, of Paris, has hit upon a new material, which, it is stated, can be sold at half the price of cast-iron, for equal capacity, while it is less than one-sixth the weight. He makes a pipe resembling those of M. Chameroy in the system, of bituminous lining inside and out, but the case, instead of being of sheet-iron, is of paper, which, being saturated with bitumen, is rolled up in the form of a hollow cylinder, fold on fold, till it has attained a thickness of about three-eights of an inch.
On the 19th of January, of this present year, a number of engineers were got together at the base of the Westminster Clock-tower, the scene of Mr. Denison’s bell craft, and there a variety of these pipes—measuring from two and a-half to seven inches internal diameter, and five feet in length—were subjected to hydraulic pressure, tested by one of Bourdon’s guages, of 220 lbs. to the square inch, equal to a column of water about 500 feet high, and this pressure they sustained without any damage. This is more than the pressure that common cast-iron pipes will sustain, and it was stated that it required 330lbs. to the inch to burst them. On testing the power of a two and a-half inch pipe to bear a transverse strain, a very satisfactory result was attained, and upon shivering a piece with a sledge-hammer it appeared that every fold of the paper was separate, and retained considerable fibrous strength, notwithstanding the heat of the bitumen it had been exposed to in the process of manufacture.
The source of strength in this arrangement is found in the fact that the pressure increases the contact of the folds of the paper, making every fold bear an equal strain like the wire-folded gun of Mr. Longridge, or the silk-folded guns of the Chinese. The adhesion of the separate folds may be illustrated by the mode in which a Thames steamer is held fast to the pier by two turns of a rope round the timber bit, by which means the friction enables a single man to control the movement.
These pipes will be less subject to the action of frost than metal is; and although they are not yet tried in large sizes, and the requisite thickness for that purpose is not yet known, it is possible that they will come largely into use for moderate sizes, and also for small service pipes to replace lead at a very far less cost than gutta percha.
The severe frost last winter, bursting our water-pipes and driving us to stand-cocks in the streets, was not creditable to us, as a mechanical nation, in its results upon our domestic water supply. There exists so simple a mode of preventing water-pipes in houses from bursting by frost, that I suspect the plumbers must be aware of it, and keep it carefully out of sight. It is to have a small spherical cistern of thin copper attached to the lower part of the water-pipe, and a gas-burner fixed below it. If, when the frost comes on, the gas-jet be lighted, the effect will be that the cistern will become a boiler on a small scale, circulating sufficient warmth through the pipes to prevent the action of the frost either in stopping the supply or in bursting the pipes. Every household might be saved from winter’s mishap in this simple mode, without the unsightly process of hay-banding its service pipes.
Some objection has been raised about difficulty in bending for curves, but without apparent reason. These pipes may be made in curved forms as easily as cast-iron; or, by filling with sand and heating, they may be bent like a malleable metal pipe. Their stiffness, and freedom from decay, renders them peculiarly eligible for the purpose of draining the permanent way of railways. Whether any better material will ultimately be discovered it is difficult to pronounce; but, so far as judgment goes, and experience has verified, a new era appears to have been attained in pipe making. The strength of the material has long been proved in the familiar instance of rocket cases, where the enormous pressure of the powder is so successfully resisted by simple concentric folds of paper.
Just at this time, Mr. Gladstone’s alteration of the tariff opportunely arrives to facilitate a new manufacture, opening up also new sources of material.