cr. and ca.). To attain perfect cleanliness the plates are pickled again in a weak sulfuric acid. Finally they are rinsed and stored in water until ready to be tinned. The tinning set consists of at least one pot of molten tin, with a zinc chloride flux on top, and a grease pot. The flux dries the plate and prepares it for the tin to adhere. If a second tin pot is used, called the wash pot, it contains tin at a lower temperature. This is followed by the grease pot, which contains oil and a tinning machine. The tinning machine has two small rollers that are spring-loaded together so that when the tinned plate is inserted the rolls squeeze off any excess tin. The springs on the tinning machine can be set to different forces to give different thicknesses of tin. Finally, the oil is cleaned off with fine bran and dusted clean. What is described here is the process as employed during the 20th century. The process grew somewhat in complexity over time, as it was found that the inclusion of additional procedures improved quality. The practice of hot rolling and then cold rolling evidently goes back to the early days, as the Knight family's tinplate works had (from its foundation in about 1740) two rolling mills, one at Bringewood (west of Ludlow) which made blackplate, and the other the tin mill at Mitton (now part of Stourport, evidently for the later stages. The strip mill Early hot rolling strip mills did not produce strip suitable for tinning, but in 1929 cold rolling began to be used to reduce the gauge further, which made tinning achievable. The plate was then tinned using the process outlined above. Tinning processes There are two processes for the tinning of the black plates: hot-dipping and electroplating. Hot-dipping Hot Tin-dipping is the process of immersing a part into a bath of pure molten tin at a temperature greater than 450°F or 232°C. Tinplate made via hot-dipped tin plating is made by cold rolling steel or iron, pickling to remove any scale, annealing to remove any strain hardening, and then coating it with a thin layer of tin. Originally this was done by producing individual or small packs of plates, which became known as the pack mill process. In the late 1920s strip mills began to replace pack mills, because they could produce the