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| Sunday, 14 March, 2010 |
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School Workshops
An exciting way to learn more about cloth making and wool processes in
one of our School Workshop visits.
Click here for more
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Booking Info
All the information you need about booking a School visit using one of our teachers packs.
Click here for more
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Carder
Wool was carded to straighten the fibres ready for
spinning. This job was always done by the spinner. In Saxon times,
an iron comb was used but by the 13th century, hand cards had been developed.
These consisted of two wooden boards covered with metal teeth
which produced a loose roll of fibres (a rolag). Frome was the
local centre of the hand card making industry. Cards were supplied
to the spinners by the clothier.
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After mechanisation, carding was carried out
on a carding set, a series of rollers which produced a flat web
of fibres. The piecener took pieces off the carding set, joined
them by hand and fed them into the slubbing billy. One of the
earliest processes to be mechanised was the conversion of carded
fibres from a web into bundles of fibres. The slubbing billy
came into use by the 1790s and looked very similar to an early
spinning jenny.
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Carder at Work |
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Modern carding involves passing fibres
through several carding sets. A multi-layered condenser has
a doffer which splits the web of fibres into continuous slivers
or slubbings. These look like thin ropes and have a very small
amount of twist which holds the fibres together.
The slubbing aprons of a condenser, which
are set as a pair one above the other with a rotating and a reciprocal
motion from side to side. This rubs the slubbing into a soft thread
which is then wound onto bobbins ready to go on the spinning machines.
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Carding Machine, about 1790 |
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