The sack (abbreviation: sck.) was an
English unit of
weight or
mass used for
coal and
wool.
It has also been used for other commodities by weight, commodities by volume, and for both weight and volume in the United States.
Wool
The wool sack or woolsack ( la, saccus lanae or ') was standardized as 2
wey
Wey may refer to:
Places
*Wey (state) (衞), or Wei, ancient Chinese state during the Zhou Dynasty
*River Wey, river in Surrey, Hampshire and West Sussex, England
*River Wey (Dorset), river of Dorset, south west England
*Wey and Arun Canal, canal ...
of 14
stone each, with each stone
merchants' pound
The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in British imperial and United States customary systems of measurement. Various definitions have been used; the most common today is the international avoirdupois pound, which is legally define ...
s each (''i.e.'' 350 merchants' pounds or about 153 kilograms), by the time of the
Assize of Weights and Measures . 12 such sacks formed the wool
last.
[. & & ]
Coal
The coal sack was standardized as an
imperial hundredweight
The hundredweight (abbreviation: cwt), formerly also known as the centum weight or quintal, is a British imperial and US customary unit of weight or mass. Its value differs between the US and British imperial systems. The two values are distingu ...
of 112
avoirdupois pounds
The pound or pound-mass is a unit of mass used in British imperial and United States customary systems of measurement. Various definitions have been used; the most common today is the international avoirdupois pound, which is legally defined ...
, approximately 51 kilograms.
Large sack
The large sack was a UK unit of weight for coal. It was introduced by the London, Westminster and Home Counties Coal Trade Act of 1831 (2 Will 4 c lxxvi), which required coal to be sold by weight rather than volume.
The
Royal Navy used large sacks holding two hundredweight for
coaling its ships. These sacks were made of
jute
Jute is a long, soft, shiny bast fiber that can be spun into coarse, strong threads. It is produced from flowering plants in the genus ''Corchorus'', which is in the mallow family Malvaceae. The primary source of the fiber is ''Corchorus olit ...
bound with
Manila rope. They were filled in the hold of a
collier using a scoop and then a wire cable was run through two iron rings at the mouth of the sack to close and hoist it over to the warship, twelve sacks at a time. A
sack truck :''"Hand truck" may also refer to Pallet jack.''
A hand truck, also known as a hand trolley, dolly, stack truck, trundler, box cart, sack barrow, cart, sack truck, two wheeler, or bag barrow, is an L-shaped box-moving handcart with handles at one ...
would then be used to take each sack to the chute of the warship's coal bunker where they would be emptied. These sacks were large and heavy, weighing at least sixteen pounds when empty, and costing 11 shillings and sixpence before the First World War.
Definition
The large sack was defined as 224 pounds.
Conversion
1 large sack ≡ 2 sacks, equivalent to 2 cwt, 224 lb, or about 102 kg
Other uses
The sack has also been used as a unit of volume. In the
American oil industry, a sack represents the amount of portland cement that occupies , and in most cases weighs . Other uses in the US include the measurement by volume of salt, where one sack is , cotton where one sack is and flour, where one sack is just . It has also been used as a measure of volume for dry goods in Britain, with one sack being equivalent to .
In British usage, a sack of flour was equivalent to 20 stone, or one-eighth of a long ton. A sack of coal was 16 stone, or , while the weight of a sack of wool depended on who was selling it. A sack of grower's wool was hundredweight or , whereas a sack of dealer's wool was considerably lighter, at .
References
External links
{{Wiktionary, sackful
Tetbury woolsack race
Units of mass
Customary units of measurement