The Collaborative International Dictionary
Decorticator \De*cor"ti*ca`tor\, n. A machine for decorticating wood, hulling grain, etc.; also, an instrument for removing surplus bark or moss from fruit trees.
Wiktionary
n. A machine that peels off the fibrous husk, bark or outer layer of some vegetable product; used in the manufacture of animal feed etc.
Wikipedia
A decorticator (from Latin: cortex, bark) is a machine for stripping the skin, bark, or rind off nuts, wood, plant stalks, grain, etc., in preparation for further processing.
In 1861, a farmer, named Bernagozzi from Bologna, manufactured a machine called a "scavezzatrice," a decorticator for hemp. A working hemp decorticator from 1890, manufactured in Germany, is preserved in a museum in Bologna. In Italy, the "scavezzatrice" faded in the 1950s because of monopolization from fossil fuel, paper interests, synthetic materials and from other less profitable crops.
Probably hundreds of different decorticators have been developed since 1890. Misconceptions spread about the device includes the suggestion that the first working hemp decorticator was invented in the United States in 1935. In 1916, there were already five different kinds of "machine brakes" for hemp in use in the United States, and still others in Europe.
One of the most discussed decorticators is the Schlichten model. Quoted from Hemp - American History Revisited by Robert Deitch:
Quoted from The Emperor Wears No Clothes - The Authoritative Historical Record of the Cannabis Plant, Marajuana Prohibition & How Hemp can still Save the World! by Jack Herer copyright 1993 Green Planet Company Publishing:
In 1919, George Schlichten received a U.S. patent on his improvements of the decorticator for treating fiber bearing plants. Schlichten failed to find investors for production of his decorticator and died as a broken man in 1923.
In 1943 wrote Lyster Hoxie Dewey:
"Numerous machines has been devised for breaking and scutching hemp and similar fibers but non have been found to be fully satisfactory in actual commercial work in the United States"There are still companies who produce and sell new decorticators for different crops.
Usage examples of "decorticator".
Schlichten had spent 18 years and $400,000 on the decorticator, a machine that could strip the fiber from nearly any plant, leaving the pulp behind.
Timken saw the decorticator a a revolutionary discovery that would improve conditions for mankind.
His hemp paper was even better than that produced for USDA Bulletin 404, he claimed, because the decorticator eliminated the retting process, leaving behind short fibers and a natural glue that held the paper together.
Chase witnessed the decorticator produce seven tons of hemp hurds in two days.
The decorticator resurfaced in the 1930s, when it was touted as the maching that would make hemp a "Billion Dollar Crop" in articles in Mechanical Engeneering and Popular Mechanics.
With the new machine, known as a decorticator, hemp is cut with a slightly modified grain binder.