I bought a used beater roll and bedplate-nice, cast metal units-from Lee Scott McDonald, Inc.2 The shaft of the roll was bent so it did not cost much. The beater catalog gives details of a couple of options for machining parts, but buying the used roll and bedplate proved to be easier. Since the beater and bedplate are the heart of the system I also felt more comfortable buying these pieces. The bedplate is 8" long and 3" wide, and the roll is 6" in diameter and 8" long. It had a %" shaft but I replaced that with a 1" shaft.  The 8" length determined the width of the trough on the feed side of the beater. I think of the beater as a circular canal, with the feed side, where the roll goes, almost twice the width of the backside of the canal (5" on my beater). I cannot say exactly how I came up with a length of 36W' for my canal, but this felt right; it covered the distance from the ramp leading to the bedplate to the end of the backfall ramp. I needed enough length to provide straight access in the trough to the roll and to accommodate the roll and the backfall. My backfall is twice the width of the bedplate.  I started building the beater by attaching a piece of %" plywood to a set of metal legs. This base piece measures 46W' x 28" overall. The base is 5" wider than the canal, all around, except where the motor drives the roll, where it is only 2" wider. I then took other pieces of 5" wide %" plywood and screwed them to the base, leaving a rectangular depression %" deep in the middle, 36Yz" long by 21" wide. The width consists   of 8V2" for the feed canal, 5" for the back canal, and 7'12" I built into the middle of the beater.  Along the straight, long sides of the inside of the raised piece of plywood I glued and screwed 6" high pieces of 1Ji" plywood. I then connected these vertical plywood pieces with 6" wide pieces of light gauge sheet metal, wrapping the metal to form the curves at the ends. I overlapped the sheet metal at least 6" at the ends and screwed it to the plywood at the top and bottom.  With the outer ring in place I then took a piece of '%" plywood, 7V2" x 26V2", and rounded the corners to match the curve of the sheet metal. I screwed this piece of plywood inside the outer ring of sheet metal and plywood. I then wrapped this with the same 6" high sheet metal, forming the inside of the canal.  Now the canal was complete. I placed the bedplate in the center of the 8" side of the canal and built up two wooden ramps. The first was on the inbound side, the direction the pulp travels, and is low. I took an 8" long piece of 1" x 6" pine and planed down one long side to a point to make a 6" ramp. My bedplate thickness was 3,4" thick so it corresponded perfectly to the ramp. The second ramp is the backfall, which rises to approximately 1" above the centerline of the roll. This highest point is '/3 of the way back from the bedplate, giving me a slope on the front which is approximately twice as steep as the back.  The two ramps keep the bedplate in place so I had to fasten them securely to the base of the beater. The high backfall I made from stacked pieces of plywood and scrap 8" long, which I glued and screwed together to form a solid piece that looks from the side like a triangle with an 8" base. After assembling the two ramps I sanded them so they provided a smooth transition from the floor of the beater.  I cut a slot into the sheet metal to allow for the motor shaft. This shaft has to be exactly over the center of the bedplate so that the roll and bedplate align. For my 1" shaft, I cut a 1"+ slot in the metal, down to the place where the shaft would be when the roll rested on the bedplate, the lowest the roll can go. I bought two pillow blocks and mounted one in the center space formed by the canal and one outside the canal. I had to build up the plywood base with additional pieces of plywood so that each pillow block would rest on the plywood and the roll would rest on the bedplate. This took another '%" of wood. I through-bolted the pillow blocks with carriage bolts up from the bottom of the base sheet of plywood, using 3/a" x 6" bolts.  Once all of the wood and sheet metal were in place, I used standard autobody fiberglass to seal and smooth all of the components. A one gallon can of resin and hardener was plenty. I used three packs of fiberglass cloth, which worked well, even in the corners. Wearing rubber gloves, I carefully mixed small quantities in a disposable plastic paint pail. Before lying in the cloth, though, I cut a 3" diameter hole in the bottom of the canal for drainage. I placed a standard kitchen sink trap with a tailpiece sticking down out of the beater. Fiberglass secured this in place and    SUMMER   made it leakproof. When I run the beater I plug this drain with a standard rubber garbage disposal plug.  When applying the fiberglass, I mixed the resin and brushed it into the corners of the canal using disposable brushes. I then laid cloth down into the corners and smoothed out all of the bubbles. After it dried, I did the same to the sides and bottom of the canal. After the first coat was dry I sanded everything down and applied a second coat, adding more glass where needed. After another sanding I covered everything with two more coats of the resin only. Between the first and second glass coats I cut a 3" x 6" piece of rubber inner tube and attached it over the motor shaft slot with fiberglass, forming a crude gasket to keep water from seeping around the shaft and out of the canal. I needed to cut a hole in the rubber, and a slot from the top down to the hole, making sure my hole was smaller than my shaft diameter.  To give the tub a white finish, I added white pigments to the last two coats of resin. This was not necessary but it makes it easier to clean out stray fibers from previous runs. The pigment is available as part of the West Fiberglass System that boat builders use. West offers a complete line of fiberglass kits and materials but they are more expensive so I only used their product on the last two coats.  I attached the pillow block bolts permanently into place with fiberglass resin. When I first installed the pillow blocks, I put heavy Y2" by 2" springs over the bolts, with a washer on the top and bottom of each spring. I intended to use this as an adjustment mechanism, decreasing the space between roll and bedplate as the beating progressed by continually tightening the nuts. But it was fairly crude and the pressure from the pulp was so great that the roll was unstable when I beat cotton cloth. (Natural fibers worked better and half stuff would probably have been fine.)  I ended up adjusting the roll using heavy 3/1" washers that I notched out to slide under each pillow block. This allows me to keep the nuts tight at all times. I start to beat with three or four washers under the pillow blocks. As the beating gets quieter and calmer, I remove one set of washers from under each end of each pillow block. Then I tighten everything up and beat some more. I repeat this until the washers are gone.  The last piece that I needed was a roll cover. This runs the length of the canal from the front of the roll to the back of the backfall. I used plastic but sheet metal would work as well. The plastic is clear, which allows me to see into the backfall area and keep an eye on the functioning of the beater. I bought a roll cover from Lee Scott McDonald Inc., inexpensive because it was known to be defective. The \1.1" plastic is bent to accommodate the roll. The front edge wraps over the roll and lies just above the level of the pulp. I pop-riveted thin aluminum flashing onto the sides of the plastic, cutting a slot for the shaft on each side. This whole mechanism I bolted in turn onto a wooden cover that sits across the whole width of the canal at the backfall end.  HA0:D P,\PERVlA I hung my motor next to the unit and used a vee belt to drive the pulley I attached to the roll shaft. I used an old motor, off a Chandler & Price press I had converted back to treadle operation. The motor started out a little slow, running at approximatel\' 200 rpm. It worked but sometimes there was trouble getting pulp over the backfalL I changed the pulley and am now running at around 400 rpm, which works better. I mounted the motor on a swing arm so that I can take the belt off when I am not using it. This also gives me tension adjustment on the belt as it stretches.  The last operation that I had to complete before beating pulp was to grind the bed plate to fit the roll exactly. I did this using 80 grit carborundum powder (the same abrasive substance found on sandpaper). I filled the beater with water, added ' 2 pound or so of carborundum, and followed the beating procedure by lowering the roll slowly into the bedplate.  In making pulp, I have had to experiment a little with the amount of water and fiber, and with the roll height. When the beater works properly there is a steady tlow of fiber over the backfall and the roll makes a steady, low-level grinding noise, with irregular pounding when a chunk of cloth or fiber passes between the roll and the bedplate.    Especially at the beginning I found it important to stay with the beater and fine tune it. Occasionally the roll would jam against the bedplate because a large piece of material was caught. I shut off the power and turned the flywheel backwards by hand, freeing the stuck materiaL Sometimes large chunks of cotton would bind up and I had to pull it from between the bedplate and roll, then tear it or cut it apart before putting it back into the beater.  Overall I am pleased with the results. The costs were minimal but I was lucky in getting the used and defective parts. I probably spent less than $200 total, a small investment for the fun I have had experimenting.  I hope this description of how I built my Hollander beater will spur others on to try their hand at it. If you have a small number of tools, a small amount of materials, and a large amount of interest, you can build one, too. Maybe Lee McDonald will have to edit a new catalog of North American beaters someday!  SUMMER 1999  A cut-away, side view of the beater trough on the side with the roll.  A side view of the pillow block assembly.  Notes  Beater Builders of North America: A Catalog of Handbul lt Beaters, 1946-1989, Lee S. McDonald, editor, The Friends of the Dard Hunter Paper Museum, Inc., 1990. This book is available from the Friends of Dard Hunter, Inc. (the group's new name). For more information, contact Betsy Cluff, Executive Director, Friends of Dard Hunter, Inc., 121 Church Street #17, Lake Oswego, OR 97034; phone: 503 / 699-8653; e-mail: instar@teleport.com.  I could not have built my beater without the help of Lee McDonald and his team. They gave me time and answered questions along the way.   25

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