MOTnews 10 (08/12/2000)

Animal fun!!

Animals mean more than just good company. They also supply us with many useful items. To start with, we can use their skins for all sorts of things. Of course we know leather clothing and shoes, but less familiar to us is the use of leather for chamois, drumheads, belts, seals for water pipes and in the past for miners' and firemans' helmets.

Even further back in time we find parchment that is made from the skins of (preferably young) sheep, goats and calves.

One sheepskin of 90cm by 60cm will for instance provide 4 parchment folio's of 30cm by 45cm, this means 8 actual pages.

As a matter of fact, to make one of those medieval bibles of 1.000 pages approximately 125 sheep met with an untimely death.

TRUE OR FALSE

Sanding paper is made of a piece of paper or fabric that has fine-grained glass, sand, amaril (a sort of stone) or iron filings glued to it. In the past we also used sharkskin for sanding.

ANSWER to TRUE OR FALSE in MOT-NEWS 9 (6/11/2000)

In some water mills the wheel turns clockwise twice a day as well as counterclockwise two times a day.

FALSE

A small number of water mills, the tide mills, work with the motion of ebb and flood, through an intricate 'lock' system. Nevertheless, the waterwheel keeps on turning in the same direction, no matter what tide is used to put it in motion. This is necessary because the millstones connected to the wheel always need to turn in the same direction.

KIDS-NEWS : something to tell your children tonight Soap to remove the grease or greasy soap?

How often do parents tell you to wash your greasy hands with lots of soap?

The funny thing is that this 'grease dissolving' soap is made out of animal fat, very often sheep's fat.

You can find different soap recipes on the following website: http://members.aol.com/oelaineo/soapmaking.html