Some Assembly Required (2007–…): Season 2, Episode 12 - Tape Measures, Panty Hose, Golf Balls - full transcript
For all the stuff in our world,
there's a story of
how it came to be.
Hello. I'm Brian Unger.
Coming up on "Some
Assembly Required,"
a ball that's got
to be up to par,
a tool that's made
one inch at a time,
and the product that
launched a fashion revolution.
The golf ball.
In its nearly
500-year existence,
it's been made of many things,
wood, metal, feathers,
and even gutta-percha.
That's a natural gum grown
in a tree in Southeast Asia.
Now, while the materials
have been radically different,
their makers have
always had one goal.
To make a golf ball that goes
straight and far every time,
even if the person who
hits it is no Tiger Woods.
We're at Titleist in
Acushnet, Massachusetts,
to find out how what goes on
inside and outside of this ball
will affect the way it
flies, the way it spins,
and how it'll feel to the
golfer when it's hit with a club.
Titleist produces more than
300 million golf balls a year.
They have 16 varieties
for players at every level.
One of Titleist's most popular
balls is the NXT Extreme.
What makes it
unique is its core,
which is made of a certain
kind of synthetic rubber.
The ball's ability to
fly straight and far
is a property of the ball's
largest component, the core.
And it is composed of a
rubber called polybutadiene.
This is a 77-pound block of it,
and Roscoe Geich
is with Titleist.
Roscoe, I don't get
to ask people much
about polybutadiene these days.
What's up with that material?
Polybutadiene is
basically the most resilient
rubber known to man.
It's a polymer, for example,
that's used in car tires today.
And so, about 50, 60 years ago,
they started experimenting
with that particular polymer
for golf-ball cores,
and, really, it's been
used ever since.
To make the core resilient,
we add peroxides
and zinc diacrylate.
Later on, these will
cause the rubber
to harden under intense heat.
Green dye is mixed in,
identifying this
batch as the NXT.
The raw materials are
dropped into the mixer,
where friction
heats up the rubber.
Now, we don't want the
rubber to get too hot just yet,
so it's fed through
these rollers.
They do two things.
They keep the rubber cool,
and they reduce it to a
more manageable size.
Can I hold one of these?
Oh, yeah, it's still warm.
And, actually,
it's kind of heavy.
But this is essentially
the core of a golf ball.
From one of these sheets, we
can get 300 cores for 300 balls.
And it feels like
heavy pizza dough.
Yes.
But for green pizza.
Next, we bring our rubber
into the conditioning room.
It's like the canyon
of cores in here.
It'll remain for four
hours as it cools further.
That'll make it easier to handle
and to insure it won't fully
harden before it's molded.
Finally, we can cut
our cores down to size.
The mix is cut into
3-inch-wide strips
and fed into an extruder...
which creates
1-inch cylindrical rods
called preforms.
We're only one step
away from a rounded core.
We're making
golf balls at Titleist.
Now, our cores have been mixed.
They've been shaped,
and they've cooled.
Now we got to
heat them up again.
We're taking the preforms
that will become our cores
from spongy to solid.
Here's why.
When you hit a ball with a club,
it deforms and then immediately
springs back, releasing energy.
The more resilient the
core, in other words,
the better its ability
to spring back,
the farther the
ball will travel.
But right now, the rubber
in these preforms is too soft
and malleable to
make a good core.
To make them more resilient,
we need to activate the
chemicals we added earlier.
Heating the preforms
up to 350 degrees,
the rubber hardens
into spherical cores
that are both tough and elastic.
After cooling for five hours,
the cores go
through a wet grinder,
where a rotating wheel
trims the excess material,
controlling the cores'
shape and weight
so that they'll meet
strict industry regulations.
Well, our perfectly
spherical core
is finally ready for its cover.
And that's done here
in injection molding.
Now, this is a
thermoplastic process.
In other words, we're
going to heat up a plastic
in almost like a liquid form.
It's going to harden
in two shapes,
two cups made of Surlyn.
It's a very unique plastic,
and that will clamp down
on the sides of our core.
The Surlyn comes
into the factory
in the form of
clear, little pellets.
This stuff may
not look like much,
but when it's transformed
into the shell of a golf ball,
it can withstand
repeated clubbings
at speeds over
100 miles an hour.
First, it's melted down,
then mixed with
titanium dioxide,
an ingredient commonly
found in paint and toothpaste.
This provides the
signature white color,
making the ball easily visible
no matter where it
lands on the course.
Well, this next
part of the assembly
is very, very exciting.
Our cores are in
their Surlyn cups.
We're going to put
them in the ball press.
We're gonna heat this
to 250 to 300 degrees
and seal those
Surlyn cups together
and get one smooth surface.
But by the time they come
out of this machine on this side,
they will have that key
exterior characteristic,
the dimple.
Now, the dimple, very important
to the ball's aerodynamics.
Absolutely. It's decreasing
the air resistance on the ball.
When an ordinary ball takes off,
it creates a wide
swath of air in its wake,
creating drag, which
slows the ball down.
Adding dimples allows
passing air to stay closer
to the ball's surface,
producing less drag.
As a result, a dimpled ball
can travel about twice
as far as a smooth one.
Now that our golf ball
has its 392 dimples,
it's sent to be buffed
one more time,
removing any excess Surlyn
that could affect
its performance.
This is very cool.
Golf balls are being shuttled
overhead inside these tubes,
where they will be blasted
with water and detergent
to remove any residual material.
After they're cleaned and dried,
they'll be ready
for the Titleist logo
and ready for painting.
From glob of rubber
to finished golf ball,
the process can take as
little as 48 hours to complete.
Here, two coats of
urethane are applied,
which give the
ball added durability
and protects the ink
from getting scratched.
All that's left now is to box
them up and hit the links.
We're out here now on the
proving grounds of Titleist,
and we're gonna put
the NXT Extreme to work.
And I have a feeling
what we've done is
engineered a ball so good
I can't blame it for my play.
That's correct.
When it comes to one of
these, precision is everything.
That's why at the
Stanley factory
in New Britain, Connecticut,
it's their mission to
make a tape measure
that's up to the job, any
job you come up with.
When they talk about what
makes a really good tape measure,
they use words like "firmness,"
"stiffness," "flexibility."
Yeah, it sounds like
we're talking about yoga.
But what really matters
in a tape measure
is something they talk
about around Stanley.
It's how long this blade
will stand out on its own.
It's called... standout.
And to get good
standout, we need steel,
so Stanley brings it in
on these giant spools.
It's like putting a big spool of
thread on a sewing machine,
except the thread
weighs 4,700 pounds.
We're ready to cut this,
literally, into ribbons.
All right, let's cut some steel.
These rollers score the
metal sheets lengthwise,
cutting them into thin
strips called blades.
These spools of steel
surprisingly look just like
finished tape measures,
but there's one major problem.
This metal is so soft
that we wouldn't get
good standout at all.
We need to harden
it using high heat.
Each one of these ribbons
of steel is fed into this furnace,
where they're heated
to about 1,800 degrees.
As the steel is
superheated, it softens,
and then it's fed under a
wheel that curves the blade,
giving it a concave shape
and helping to further
increase standout.
The high temperature alters
the steel's molecular structure,
so, when it cools,
the steel will hold this
shape permanently.
Now time to turn
this tape into a tool.
Here we have the
heat-treated metal
that's fed through this line.
And this is where a
Stanley tape measure
really starts to
look like a Stanley.
When the yellow
paint is finally applied.
It's Stanley yellow.
The latex paint is
mixed with water
at a four-to-one ratio,
ensuring a smooth,
thin coat of yellow.
What is a tape measure
without its measure?
It's just... tape.
Here's where all that changes.
The actual yellow blade,
which we've just painted,
is fed through an
elaborate system of pulleys,
where it meets this guy.
On this band is a reverse
image of the measurement.
Wheels with black paint
roll on fractions
of inches and feet.
Red paint highlights
two important
things for builders.
Each inch after the first 12
and every standard stud point.
After the numbers
dry, a layer of Mylar,
an extremely
strong polyester film,
is rolled on,
sealing our paint job.
Each tape measure must be
accurate to 1/4,000 of an inch,
or the entire
spool is thrown out.
Each one is fed into
a laser interferometer,
an electronic gauge
that confirms the
measurements are exact.
After passing the test,
the spool is cut to
the appropriate length.
That is the sound of 35 feet.
It's time now to
inspect our blades.
This is the last chance to make
sure every inch of every blade
is marked and sealed properly.
- What's wrong with this?
- It's loose Mylar.
Oh, wow. Oh, there,
you can really see that.
Hey, I'm taking this
one out, everybody.
We got a bad one.
Once they pass muster,
they move down
the line to the hooker.
Now, this is a process
called... hooking.
- Hooking.
- Right? Hooking?
This is where the
hook is basically riveted
to the end of the blade.
And Marianne has
basically dropped that blade
down inside this spool,
and they wind them.
At this point, our measuring
tape is just a flexible ruler.
It's time to make it a bit
more handy and retractable.
So, this is the engine of a
tape measure, the spring.
They are coiled steel that
are wrapped around a peg.
And they are curled this way
like you would curl a ribbon,
by taking scissors
and pulling it alongside.
This coiled spring is
loaded in backwards,
so as the blade is drawn out,
the spring is wound
up tighter and tighter,
creating incredible
amounts of tension.
That tension,
that stored energy,
whips the blade back in place.
With a lot of
cutting and spooling
and a bit of heat and paint,
we've gone from
giant spools of steel
to thin ribbons of firm,
measurable success.
All in a day's work.
Now, that pile of tape measures
is a true sign of
a novice at work.
That's how far behind
I've made this line.
The end of the line,
where these tape measures
undergo one last inspection
before they're shipped.
That it has, indeed, three
rivets here on the end,
that there are three screws,
and, oh, yeah, that the
label on the front is accurate.
It's then put on
the correct package
and, boom, it's shipped.
And how about the standout?
And that's it. And,
oh, check it out.
That is 13 glorious
feet of standout.
Now, that... is a tape measure.
They may be a mystery to men...
Ah, but women know
all about this garment
that revolutionized fashion
and tummies and
legs and rear ends.
But assembling them...
That is a riddle
wrapped in a puzzle
covered in spandex.
It's panty hose.
Straddling the line between
science and fashion,
panty hose were invented
the year before the miniskirt,
and as hemlines
rose, so did sales.
We're at Holt Hosiery in
Burlington, North Carolina,
to unravel a big, big secret.
How all these machines
can make panty hose
for any woman who
decides to wear them.
Panty hose, one
shape but many sizes.
All of them, no matter
what color they end up,
start out white.
So what does it take to make
these shapely undergarments?
Like any good story about
ladies' undergarments,
this one begins with
a fascinating yarn.
This yarn is
actually two fibers.
On the inside is spandex.
Spandex is an amazing invention.
It can stretch to
hundreds of times its length
and snap right back.
On the outside is nylon.
Nylon is responsible
for panty hose's sheer
look and soft touch,
and it's actually the world's
first fully man-made fiber.
These machines wrap
a hair-like thread of nylon
around a main thread of spandex
to create the basic
building material
for the finished product.
After all this,
the yarn has to
age for about a week
to rest and recover from
the stress of this experience.
After that, the
knitting can begin.
These high-speed knitting
machines each have 400 needles,
which knit up to 16
threads together at one time.
They can create a
million stitches a minute.
While the cylinder rotates,
each needle comes up to
grab a thread and create a loop,
which will join with
the next row of stitches
and so on and so on
until the individual
leg is complete.
When the panty hose
are done being sewn,
they're pumped up
through these vacuum tubes
and dropped into
these mesh bags.
And great care is taken not
to damage the panty hose.
Wow.
How tall are these
women getting?
Which brings us
back to the question,
how does one basic form
fit any woman's shape?
It's the spandex fiber
that allows panty hose
to work for all body types,
from the slim to the shapely.
During the knitting process,
the nylon fiber
has been stretched
and needs to be cured
to return to its proper size.
So the hose are
treated in an autoclave,
a device that adds
heat and humidity,
causing the nylon legs to shrink
to the desired length and width.
So, from out of the heat,
our blanks are now
in their finished size,
but we've got a problem.
We want to put
them on all at once.
We need to sew them
together into finished panty hose.
Myrna is doing it
on this fairly interesting
rotisserie of sewing.
You're actually taking the two,
and we're putting
them together here.
And they'll be permanently
bonded together
and sewn together.
First, each blank is
cut about 8 inches,
from the waistline
down toward the foot.
Two blanks are stitched
together along those incisions,
creating our familiar
panty-hose shape.
We're adding a piece
of cotton to the hose,
putting the "panty"
in "panty hose."
Our panty hose
are fully constructed,
but they are far from complete.
At this stage, they are
referred to as gray goods,
not because they're
the color gray,
but that comes from
the French word "grège,"
which means "undyed."
It's here that our
all-white panty hose
become nude, beige,
charcoal, or suntan.
Once the product
has cooled down,
it's ready for the
final step, packaging.
And out the door they go.
They have a very special
date for a lovely lady...
and her legs.
there's a story of
how it came to be.
Hello. I'm Brian Unger.
Coming up on "Some
Assembly Required,"
a ball that's got
to be up to par,
a tool that's made
one inch at a time,
and the product that
launched a fashion revolution.
The golf ball.
In its nearly
500-year existence,
it's been made of many things,
wood, metal, feathers,
and even gutta-percha.
That's a natural gum grown
in a tree in Southeast Asia.
Now, while the materials
have been radically different,
their makers have
always had one goal.
To make a golf ball that goes
straight and far every time,
even if the person who
hits it is no Tiger Woods.
We're at Titleist in
Acushnet, Massachusetts,
to find out how what goes on
inside and outside of this ball
will affect the way it
flies, the way it spins,
and how it'll feel to the
golfer when it's hit with a club.
Titleist produces more than
300 million golf balls a year.
They have 16 varieties
for players at every level.
One of Titleist's most popular
balls is the NXT Extreme.
What makes it
unique is its core,
which is made of a certain
kind of synthetic rubber.
The ball's ability to
fly straight and far
is a property of the ball's
largest component, the core.
And it is composed of a
rubber called polybutadiene.
This is a 77-pound block of it,
and Roscoe Geich
is with Titleist.
Roscoe, I don't get
to ask people much
about polybutadiene these days.
What's up with that material?
Polybutadiene is
basically the most resilient
rubber known to man.
It's a polymer, for example,
that's used in car tires today.
And so, about 50, 60 years ago,
they started experimenting
with that particular polymer
for golf-ball cores,
and, really, it's been
used ever since.
To make the core resilient,
we add peroxides
and zinc diacrylate.
Later on, these will
cause the rubber
to harden under intense heat.
Green dye is mixed in,
identifying this
batch as the NXT.
The raw materials are
dropped into the mixer,
where friction
heats up the rubber.
Now, we don't want the
rubber to get too hot just yet,
so it's fed through
these rollers.
They do two things.
They keep the rubber cool,
and they reduce it to a
more manageable size.
Can I hold one of these?
Oh, yeah, it's still warm.
And, actually,
it's kind of heavy.
But this is essentially
the core of a golf ball.
From one of these sheets, we
can get 300 cores for 300 balls.
And it feels like
heavy pizza dough.
Yes.
But for green pizza.
Next, we bring our rubber
into the conditioning room.
It's like the canyon
of cores in here.
It'll remain for four
hours as it cools further.
That'll make it easier to handle
and to insure it won't fully
harden before it's molded.
Finally, we can cut
our cores down to size.
The mix is cut into
3-inch-wide strips
and fed into an extruder...
which creates
1-inch cylindrical rods
called preforms.
We're only one step
away from a rounded core.
We're making
golf balls at Titleist.
Now, our cores have been mixed.
They've been shaped,
and they've cooled.
Now we got to
heat them up again.
We're taking the preforms
that will become our cores
from spongy to solid.
Here's why.
When you hit a ball with a club,
it deforms and then immediately
springs back, releasing energy.
The more resilient the
core, in other words,
the better its ability
to spring back,
the farther the
ball will travel.
But right now, the rubber
in these preforms is too soft
and malleable to
make a good core.
To make them more resilient,
we need to activate the
chemicals we added earlier.
Heating the preforms
up to 350 degrees,
the rubber hardens
into spherical cores
that are both tough and elastic.
After cooling for five hours,
the cores go
through a wet grinder,
where a rotating wheel
trims the excess material,
controlling the cores'
shape and weight
so that they'll meet
strict industry regulations.
Well, our perfectly
spherical core
is finally ready for its cover.
And that's done here
in injection molding.
Now, this is a
thermoplastic process.
In other words, we're
going to heat up a plastic
in almost like a liquid form.
It's going to harden
in two shapes,
two cups made of Surlyn.
It's a very unique plastic,
and that will clamp down
on the sides of our core.
The Surlyn comes
into the factory
in the form of
clear, little pellets.
This stuff may
not look like much,
but when it's transformed
into the shell of a golf ball,
it can withstand
repeated clubbings
at speeds over
100 miles an hour.
First, it's melted down,
then mixed with
titanium dioxide,
an ingredient commonly
found in paint and toothpaste.
This provides the
signature white color,
making the ball easily visible
no matter where it
lands on the course.
Well, this next
part of the assembly
is very, very exciting.
Our cores are in
their Surlyn cups.
We're going to put
them in the ball press.
We're gonna heat this
to 250 to 300 degrees
and seal those
Surlyn cups together
and get one smooth surface.
But by the time they come
out of this machine on this side,
they will have that key
exterior characteristic,
the dimple.
Now, the dimple, very important
to the ball's aerodynamics.
Absolutely. It's decreasing
the air resistance on the ball.
When an ordinary ball takes off,
it creates a wide
swath of air in its wake,
creating drag, which
slows the ball down.
Adding dimples allows
passing air to stay closer
to the ball's surface,
producing less drag.
As a result, a dimpled ball
can travel about twice
as far as a smooth one.
Now that our golf ball
has its 392 dimples,
it's sent to be buffed
one more time,
removing any excess Surlyn
that could affect
its performance.
This is very cool.
Golf balls are being shuttled
overhead inside these tubes,
where they will be blasted
with water and detergent
to remove any residual material.
After they're cleaned and dried,
they'll be ready
for the Titleist logo
and ready for painting.
From glob of rubber
to finished golf ball,
the process can take as
little as 48 hours to complete.
Here, two coats of
urethane are applied,
which give the
ball added durability
and protects the ink
from getting scratched.
All that's left now is to box
them up and hit the links.
We're out here now on the
proving grounds of Titleist,
and we're gonna put
the NXT Extreme to work.
And I have a feeling
what we've done is
engineered a ball so good
I can't blame it for my play.
That's correct.
When it comes to one of
these, precision is everything.
That's why at the
Stanley factory
in New Britain, Connecticut,
it's their mission to
make a tape measure
that's up to the job, any
job you come up with.
When they talk about what
makes a really good tape measure,
they use words like "firmness,"
"stiffness," "flexibility."
Yeah, it sounds like
we're talking about yoga.
But what really matters
in a tape measure
is something they talk
about around Stanley.
It's how long this blade
will stand out on its own.
It's called... standout.
And to get good
standout, we need steel,
so Stanley brings it in
on these giant spools.
It's like putting a big spool of
thread on a sewing machine,
except the thread
weighs 4,700 pounds.
We're ready to cut this,
literally, into ribbons.
All right, let's cut some steel.
These rollers score the
metal sheets lengthwise,
cutting them into thin
strips called blades.
These spools of steel
surprisingly look just like
finished tape measures,
but there's one major problem.
This metal is so soft
that we wouldn't get
good standout at all.
We need to harden
it using high heat.
Each one of these ribbons
of steel is fed into this furnace,
where they're heated
to about 1,800 degrees.
As the steel is
superheated, it softens,
and then it's fed under a
wheel that curves the blade,
giving it a concave shape
and helping to further
increase standout.
The high temperature alters
the steel's molecular structure,
so, when it cools,
the steel will hold this
shape permanently.
Now time to turn
this tape into a tool.
Here we have the
heat-treated metal
that's fed through this line.
And this is where a
Stanley tape measure
really starts to
look like a Stanley.
When the yellow
paint is finally applied.
It's Stanley yellow.
The latex paint is
mixed with water
at a four-to-one ratio,
ensuring a smooth,
thin coat of yellow.
What is a tape measure
without its measure?
It's just... tape.
Here's where all that changes.
The actual yellow blade,
which we've just painted,
is fed through an
elaborate system of pulleys,
where it meets this guy.
On this band is a reverse
image of the measurement.
Wheels with black paint
roll on fractions
of inches and feet.
Red paint highlights
two important
things for builders.
Each inch after the first 12
and every standard stud point.
After the numbers
dry, a layer of Mylar,
an extremely
strong polyester film,
is rolled on,
sealing our paint job.
Each tape measure must be
accurate to 1/4,000 of an inch,
or the entire
spool is thrown out.
Each one is fed into
a laser interferometer,
an electronic gauge
that confirms the
measurements are exact.
After passing the test,
the spool is cut to
the appropriate length.
That is the sound of 35 feet.
It's time now to
inspect our blades.
This is the last chance to make
sure every inch of every blade
is marked and sealed properly.
- What's wrong with this?
- It's loose Mylar.
Oh, wow. Oh, there,
you can really see that.
Hey, I'm taking this
one out, everybody.
We got a bad one.
Once they pass muster,
they move down
the line to the hooker.
Now, this is a process
called... hooking.
- Hooking.
- Right? Hooking?
This is where the
hook is basically riveted
to the end of the blade.
And Marianne has
basically dropped that blade
down inside this spool,
and they wind them.
At this point, our measuring
tape is just a flexible ruler.
It's time to make it a bit
more handy and retractable.
So, this is the engine of a
tape measure, the spring.
They are coiled steel that
are wrapped around a peg.
And they are curled this way
like you would curl a ribbon,
by taking scissors
and pulling it alongside.
This coiled spring is
loaded in backwards,
so as the blade is drawn out,
the spring is wound
up tighter and tighter,
creating incredible
amounts of tension.
That tension,
that stored energy,
whips the blade back in place.
With a lot of
cutting and spooling
and a bit of heat and paint,
we've gone from
giant spools of steel
to thin ribbons of firm,
measurable success.
All in a day's work.
Now, that pile of tape measures
is a true sign of
a novice at work.
That's how far behind
I've made this line.
The end of the line,
where these tape measures
undergo one last inspection
before they're shipped.
That it has, indeed, three
rivets here on the end,
that there are three screws,
and, oh, yeah, that the
label on the front is accurate.
It's then put on
the correct package
and, boom, it's shipped.
And how about the standout?
And that's it. And,
oh, check it out.
That is 13 glorious
feet of standout.
Now, that... is a tape measure.
They may be a mystery to men...
Ah, but women know
all about this garment
that revolutionized fashion
and tummies and
legs and rear ends.
But assembling them...
That is a riddle
wrapped in a puzzle
covered in spandex.
It's panty hose.
Straddling the line between
science and fashion,
panty hose were invented
the year before the miniskirt,
and as hemlines
rose, so did sales.
We're at Holt Hosiery in
Burlington, North Carolina,
to unravel a big, big secret.
How all these machines
can make panty hose
for any woman who
decides to wear them.
Panty hose, one
shape but many sizes.
All of them, no matter
what color they end up,
start out white.
So what does it take to make
these shapely undergarments?
Like any good story about
ladies' undergarments,
this one begins with
a fascinating yarn.
This yarn is
actually two fibers.
On the inside is spandex.
Spandex is an amazing invention.
It can stretch to
hundreds of times its length
and snap right back.
On the outside is nylon.
Nylon is responsible
for panty hose's sheer
look and soft touch,
and it's actually the world's
first fully man-made fiber.
These machines wrap
a hair-like thread of nylon
around a main thread of spandex
to create the basic
building material
for the finished product.
After all this,
the yarn has to
age for about a week
to rest and recover from
the stress of this experience.
After that, the
knitting can begin.
These high-speed knitting
machines each have 400 needles,
which knit up to 16
threads together at one time.
They can create a
million stitches a minute.
While the cylinder rotates,
each needle comes up to
grab a thread and create a loop,
which will join with
the next row of stitches
and so on and so on
until the individual
leg is complete.
When the panty hose
are done being sewn,
they're pumped up
through these vacuum tubes
and dropped into
these mesh bags.
And great care is taken not
to damage the panty hose.
Wow.
How tall are these
women getting?
Which brings us
back to the question,
how does one basic form
fit any woman's shape?
It's the spandex fiber
that allows panty hose
to work for all body types,
from the slim to the shapely.
During the knitting process,
the nylon fiber
has been stretched
and needs to be cured
to return to its proper size.
So the hose are
treated in an autoclave,
a device that adds
heat and humidity,
causing the nylon legs to shrink
to the desired length and width.
So, from out of the heat,
our blanks are now
in their finished size,
but we've got a problem.
We want to put
them on all at once.
We need to sew them
together into finished panty hose.
Myrna is doing it
on this fairly interesting
rotisserie of sewing.
You're actually taking the two,
and we're putting
them together here.
And they'll be permanently
bonded together
and sewn together.
First, each blank is
cut about 8 inches,
from the waistline
down toward the foot.
Two blanks are stitched
together along those incisions,
creating our familiar
panty-hose shape.
We're adding a piece
of cotton to the hose,
putting the "panty"
in "panty hose."
Our panty hose
are fully constructed,
but they are far from complete.
At this stage, they are
referred to as gray goods,
not because they're
the color gray,
but that comes from
the French word "grège,"
which means "undyed."
It's here that our
all-white panty hose
become nude, beige,
charcoal, or suntan.
Once the product
has cooled down,
it's ready for the
final step, packaging.
And out the door they go.
They have a very special
date for a lovely lady...
and her legs.