“The manufacture of golf balls at St Andrews affords employment to about six men, constantly at work, and besides the consumption of the place, which is about three hundred dozen annually, they find means to export every year to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Perth and other places, upwards of sixty gross, or eight-thousand six hundred and forty balls. A good workman makes about nine balls a day…The employment is accounted unhealthy, and many of the ball makers have been observed fall sacrifices to consumption [tuberculosis], whether it be that the flue arising from the musty feathers they use being inhaled by the breath communicates a taint to their lungs, or that the mode of forcing these feathers confines and injures the chest.” (From David Grierson, Saint Andrews as it Was and As it Is, Being the Third Edition of Dr. Grierson’s Delineations, 1838)
The great Allan Robertson made 2,456 feather balls in 1844, 1,021 in 1840 and 1,392 in 1841. Ball makers made light and heavy balls, but those medium sized and weighing 28 pennyweights (1.536 ounces, compared to the modern ball of 1.62 ounces) were the best. Above this number they were too heavy, below it, too light. Old Tom Morris described the process of making featherie balls: “You had a little pocket composed of bull’s hide, which had previously been cured with alum, and then you stuffed it as full as possible with feathers. You could put about a hatful of feathers into one ball, and the stuffing of them was no easy job, I can tell you. When that was done, you had just to sew up the opening in the side of the pocket and your ball was made.” The ball then received three coats of paint.
