roller

Same as sand-roller.

One who or that which rolls, especially a cylinder which turns on its axis, used for various purposes, as smoothing, crushing, and spreading out.

A rolling-pin.

In printing, a cylindrical rod of iron covered with a thick composition of glue and molasses, or glue, sugar, and glycerin, which takes ink on its surface by rolling on a table or against other rollers, and which deposits this ink on types when it is rolled over them.

In etching, a cylinder, about three inches in diameter, covered with soft leather, and used for revarnishing an imperfectly bitten plate. The ground is applied to the roller with a palette-knife on which a little has been taken up. When the ground has, by repeated passing, been evenly spread over all parts of the roller, this is carefully passed with slight pressure over the etched plate so as to cover its surface with varnish, without allowing it to enter the furrows.

In organ-building, a wooden bar with pins in the ends upon which it may be rolled or rocked, and two projecting arms, usually at some distance from each other, one of which is pulled by a tracker from the keyboards, while the other pulls a tracker attached to a valve. Rollers are primarily designed to transfer motion from side to side, but they also often change it from a horizontal to a vertical plane, or vice versa. The rollers belonging to a single keyboard are usually placed together on a common roller-board, and the entire mechanism is called a roller-board action or movement. See cut under organ.

Any cylindrical tool or part of a machine serving to press, flatten, guide, etc., as the cylinders of a paper-making machine, the impression-cylinders in calico-printing, the roller-die by means of which patterns are transferred to such cylinders, etc.

The barrel of a musical box or of a chime-ringing machine.

That upon which something may be rolled up, as a wooden cylinder, or pasteboard rolled up, usually with a circular section.

A cylindrical or spherical body upon which a heavy body can be rolled or moved along: used to lessen friction.