DRS, Accelerator Wheels, and Low Grist Yarns

Many of the commercial double drive wheels come with a differential rotation speed of ~1.6. this would seem to make them ideal for making singles for worsted weight 2-ply yarns.

However, such thick yarns rapidly change the effective diameter of the bobbin as they accumulate on the bobbin.  Changes in the effective diameter of the bobbin change the DRS,  To keep grist/twist within ~10%, DRS need to be kept within  ~10%.  When you accumulate 1/4" of yarn on the bobbin, the diameter changes by 1/2" and the DRS changes by a lot and one needs to either change flyer whorls or wind off or allow slippage.  Slippage is the easiest, but why go to the effort of having a DD system, if you are just going to let the drive band slip?  I mean, at these grists we do not have to worry about breaking fine singles.

My first choice for spinning a single with grist of less than 2,500 ypp is single drive, bobbin lead (Irish tension).  These yarns do not require at lot of twist, so one does not need the very high rpm that requires 2 drive bands.  With these yarns, two thousand rpm will produce 10 yards per minute, which is about as fast as you can draft quality yarn.  With 90 rpm as a comfortable treadling cadence, that means a good ratio is ~1:24.

Whorls less than 2" (50 mm) in diameter tend to slip, so if you really want 2,000 rpm, then you need a whorl of 2" and a drive wheel of  48"!!  Forty-eight inch drive wheels are a big pain.

Enter the accelerator wheel.

When I first went looking for more speed for fine singles, I went to higher ratios by decreasing the size of my whorls. It was more an education than a success.

Today, I use the Ashford Jumbo flyer in Scotch Tension mode with the accelerator wheel for plying, and I routinely ply at more than 2,000 rpm.  I could just as well be spinning singles at (more than)  9 yards per minute. I have done samples and tests but no production spinning with that plying setup. Since with Scotch tension, worsted yarn does not self assemble as it does with DRS, it is all long draw woolen, rather than worsted. The speed is limited by my drafting, rather than the speed of the equipment.

Since low grist worsted tends to be harsh, when I want thick worsted yarns, I ply them up from fine worsted singles and have no interest in trying to figure out how to use DRS to spin low grist yarns.  On the other hand, this means that I have a great desire for fine singles.

Bottom line -- DRS for low grist yarns is a waste of effort.  DD without DRS is a waste of effort.  The only reason that people do it is that they have heard myths about the power of  double drive wheels  And, DD does have power.

DD with DRS can do things that SD simply cannot.  DD with DRS is a very powerful tool for spinning singles in the range of 2,500 to 45,000 ypp (5 m/gram to 90 m/gram). With DRS, true worsted and true woolen can be spun with almost the same drafting technique - what differs is the fiber preparation. Woolen is spun from a pile of carded rolags and worsted is spun from a distaff of combed sliver.  In particular, DRS allows spinning true worsted singles faster than long draw woolen singles of the same grist can be spun. (Woolen requires more twist than worsted of the same grist.) With DD/DRS, true worsted 5,600 ypp singles (10s) can be hand spun at 10 yd/minute on a sustained basis.  However, this puts very high demands on fiber preparation to avoid "twittering", which is variation in thickness of a single as a result of variation in the density of the sliver being spun.  Even with minor twittering, DRS allows spinning 560 yard hanks that are consistently within 5% of the desired weight.

And now you know why I have such respect for Clemes and Clemes.  Better fiber preparation is at the core of better and faster spinning.

On the other hand, minor twittering will not affect the final quality of 5-ply sport weight yarn.  The folks who say it does do not make enough of such yarn to make many objects from it.

3-ply again

After much wandering in the land of grist, I have decided that I really like 5,600 ypp singles  as a basis of knitting yarns.

I spin such singles from long wool like Romney, a blend of medium wools that I get from a  commercial vendor, and Anna Harvey's fine Rambouillet or  Royal Fibers CVM.  For knitting, these days, I am spinning everything semi-worsted.  Everything gets spinning oil and several passes through the drum carder.  Sometimes the batts are dized off to form roving and sometimes they are just torn into strips.  Then, they are all spun at 9 tpi.  The slight woolen character of the yarn means that these yarns are softer than worsted yarns of the same grist and twist and firmer than pure woolen yarns.  And the long wool yarns are more worsted in character and firmer than the singles from finer fibers.

I have been blending these singles into yarns of specific use.  Hiking socks are 3-ply all Romney and Cotswold - very durable.  Street socks and are 3-ply - all medium wool - not as firm as hiking socks.   A ply of each gives a mitten yarn that is durable, but which fulls into a soft, dense fabric.  The long wool singles help stabilize the fabric, and the fine wool provides fill. (These are gloves - no shrinking and felting allowed.)

I knit these yarns on needles in the 2 mm range.  Stitch counts run just under 10 spi, so the fabrics are not at all stiff.  In general, the fabrics are very light weight, low bulk, and warmer than commercial 2-ply worsted weight yarns knit at 5 spi.  Thus, I have warmth with less weight or bulk, and with much better drape.

I find these yarn somewhat less splitty and easier/faster to knit than the 6-strand yarns of the same grist that I produced from commercial warp yarn.  Since knitting takes longer than spinning, over all, I  find spinning my own 5,600 singles faster/easier than using the 2-ply, 5,600 ypp warp yarn to cable up this grist of yarn. I also like being able to control the fiber content.

My 3-ply yarns are about the same grist as Shetland 2-ply jumper yarns, that are often knit in the just under 8 spi range.  However, when my 3-ply medium wool yarn is knit at that gauge, the 3-py produces a warmer and actually softer fabric, with a better drape.  In the over all cost of the object from fleece to finished product, the cost of  the extra ply is trivial - on the order of  less than 10%.  In a commercial operation, seeking to control production costs to meet a price point, 10% production costs is a big deal.  For a craftsman seeking to produce a much better product, 10% higher production costs to produce a much higher quality product are a good investment.

Woolen and Worsted

I hear that some are now teaching that for woolen prep, the fiber should be fed into the drum carder -- cross ways!!

Feeding fibers cross ways into the carder will result in (some) fibers that are parallel to the direction of drafting after the rolag is formed and this will result in a semi-woolen yarn.  Semi-woolen yarns are stronger for less twist than true woolen yarns, but have less loft.  The lower twist requirements are a real advantage when working with a spindle or slow wheel – or for weft. They are not bad yarns, they are just different.

There is certainty nothing inherently wrong with semi-woolen yarn.  In deed it has great virtues, such requiring significantly less twist to form a competent yarn.  However, it is not woolen and will never have the loft of a true woolen preparation yarn.  If I were a teacher facing a class with rather slow wheels, I might will very well teach feeding fiber into the carder crosswise because it would let the students produce more yarn faster and that will make them very happy. the teacher is betting is that nobody will look at the yarn they spin and announce "This is only only semi-woolen,  not woolen.".  A textile judge would simply rank it as "less lofty".  

Thus, in using the drum carder to make rolags for woolen spinning,  I think the fiber should be fed in parallel  with the rotation of the drum. The batts that I make rolags from are fragile and easy to split lengthwise if  I take them off the swift, but  as the rolag is rolled, all the fibers are at approximately right angles to the direction of drafting. and  yes the rolags are fragile.  See

 ( http://ssa.nls.uk/film/1129  ) at minute 5:58. The rolag is very easy  to pull apart if elongated without twist. As the rolag is elongated in drafting under twist the fibers spiral into the yarn producing the loftiest yarn, but requiring a lot of twist to make the yarn competent.  For very light and lofty woolen yarns, I use the cotton cards on fine fiber to make long white clouds of nothing.  These draft and spin into a very lofty yarn.  Somehow, hand cards seem to be able to produce lower density rolags than I can make on the drum carder. Spinning fine woolen yarns requires a 30% more twist then the same grist of semi-worsted.

Feeding the fiber in parallel  with the rotation of the drum, and then dizing off to form roving will produce a semi-worsted yarn, which has lower twist requirements, but has less loft.  On the other hand it is a much  more economical use of fiber than true worsted, particularly in applications like knitting and weft.

True worsted requires combing. Combing removes all the short fibers.  Worsted spinning produces the strongest, most durable, smoothest,  and for long wool, the most lustrous yarns.  Worsted spinning requires the least amount of twist for the grist, but low grist worsted yarns are harsh and unpleasant. Thus true worsted needs to be spun high grist . If a thick yarn is wanted, ply a lot of fine singles together. Thus, worsted has a very  high  total twist in the finished yarn.   Such yarns are a large effort on a slow wheel. Combing also result in large losses of fiber prior to spinning.  Thus, true worsted yarn is very expensive.  Worsted is best worked on long wool, so the waste is not ideal for either felting or woolen spun yarns. 

The bottom line is that true woolen and true worsted spinning want a lot more twist than the “semis”.  As a spinning teacher, facing a class of students with slow wheels, teaching semi-woolen and semi-worsted is the option of least resistance, and there is a tendency to fudge the terminology.  It is hard to tell a class of new spinners that they need to discard the shorts out of their rather expensive top in order to make true worsted. It is easier to just have them spin semi-worsted.  My point is that if one looks at sweaters in “Needless Markup” on Union Square in SF or 3 Bags Full in Santa Monica, a nice sweater from semi-worsted yarn is $800, while one with the gleam of true, finely spun, worsted yarn is $5,000. For an artisan spinner the difference is 30% extra fiber waste and 40 more tpi (more and finer plies) in the finished yarn. 

I am not saying that one should attempt to hand spin worsted yarn for the fashion houses of Paris and Rome, I am saying that the gleam of fine worsted spun yarns has an artistic and aesthetic appeal that sometimes makes the effort and expense to spin true worsted worthwhile even if its other properties  (warmth, durability, resistance to felting, . . .) are not required.

In my case, spinning the yarn for a 5-ply sport weight sweater worsted, rather than semi- worsted takes an additional pound of fiber. Spinning 4-ply jumper weight  as true woolen takes an extra 12 or 16 hours of spinning.  On the other hand, if I have a good supply of long wool and "Viking" combs (rather than cards) it is faster and easier to spin the yarn as worsted.  I think that on those harshly cold islands they sometimes did things the easy way.

Today, we think of Fair Isle as always knit from woolen  or semi-woolen yarn.  However, there is no reason why a modern artist cannot incorporate the luster and gleam of worsted spun yarns into Fair Isle style knitting patterns.

The loom web

Freed from the tyranny of bobbins and prins, the woolen weft soars past the 2 kilo mark     Then, there is a kilo++ of worsted warp at about the same grist. That is about 20,000 yards of fine, high twist, single for those of you that are counting.

 I am in new territory as far as yards of single spun for one project.  The warp was all washed and blocked on a reel.  I am going to go back and steam block it on a nid.  Steam blocked singles are better. Singles blocked under tension are better.

Previously, I had steam blocked worsted spun singles, but this weft is woolen. Steam blocking woolen singles make them much stronger ---and the steam makes the ends of the fibers stand out from the yarn so it is much softer.  It is giving me whole new respect for handspun woolen yarn. This is not yarn you get by "thwacking it!"