The Craft is Textiles

So! the question is, "How good are the textiles that one can produce?"

I look to history for clues as to what textiles can be produced, and clues as to the best ways to produce textiles, but how they actually made textiles at any particular time and place does not matter to me.  All that matters to me is:  "How good a textile can I produce?", and "How can I produce a better textile?"

And, if you are in the craft, I am going to judge you by how good a textile you can produce. I do not care about your knowledge of history, I care about the quality of textiles that you produce.    You may be a great textile historian and have published in many peer reviewed journals, and written many books, but I am going to judge you by how well you spin.

Why?  Because, good spinning is the basis of great textiles.

Even if you are a weaver or knitter, I am going to judge you primarily on your spinning ability.  Mill spun yarns are a baseline. Mill spun is average. Anyone can BUY mill spun.  It is hard to knit an exceptional object if you are using the same yarn as everyone else.  If you are going to be making superior textiles, you need to be working with superior yarns.  That means you must have a deep understand of spinning.  The only way to have a deep understand spinning is be a very good spinner.

The exceptional textile will be constructed from exceptional yarn because the exceptional knitter, weaver, lace maker, and etc. capable of making exceptional textiles will use exceptional yarns.   The only way to know exceptional yarns is to make them. The skill to make exceptional yarns is earned, it cannot be bought. Taking the class does not mean that you have the skills. The skill to spin exceptional yarns comes from spinning miles and miles of exceptional yarn. Do not tell me you took the class; show me the yarn.

The other side of this is that a yarn is not exceptional until it has been fabricated into a textile that has a purpose.  Only then, do we know if the yarn has all the qualities and attributes required for the purpose, so the textile is of exceptional quality. No yarn can be exceptional until its purpose is defined. The spinner must understand the requirements and purpose of the textile before the spinner can spin an exceptional yarn. Just as the spinner enables the competent weaver, the competent weaver or the competent knitter enables the competent spinner.

No yarn sitting in a yarn shop is exceptional, because it has no purpose. Sitting there in the yarn shop, we do not know if it is going to be baby booties, a seaman's sweater, socks, a rug, or a tapestry. The yarn cannot be judged exceptionally fit for its purpose, until its purpose is defined.  We do not know if it will be worn by a red head or a blond or a brunet. Each person's coloring demand it's own wardrobe palette.  The fitness of the yarn cannot be determined until it has been assigned to a specific project/task.

Likewise, a modern hand spinner that spins yarns and waits for the yarn to tell her what it wants to be is not going to produce exceptional textiles.  The textile maker must plan the yarn so that the yarn is fit for the project in every way.  Only then can the yarn become an exceptional textile.

Five years ago, I took up spinning because I was a knitter, and I was NOT happy with the mill spun yarns available. For 3 years, I regretted the move to spinning because I was not seeing other spinners producing yarns that I liked better than mill spun.  The turning point was the better fliers from Alden Amos.

In the last 6 months, with the accelerator and the better Lazy Kate, I am finally producing yarns that make hand spinning worth while.  I am very pissed off that most of the experienced hand spinners seemed desperate to limit my technical advances in spanning by depreciating and deprecating everything that I did that was a little different from the way that other modern hand spinners spin.

Modern hand spinners have forgotten how to spin fine and spin fast.  Moreover, they have forgotten that it is even possibly to spin fine and to spin fast.  Modern hand spinners tell every begging spinner: You cannot spin that fine.  You cannot spin that fast. You cannot make yarns with that many plies.  And, everyone in the echo chamber keeps repeating those mantras until the next generation of beginning spinners comes along.  It is not fair to the beginning spinners.

More Plies

I was sorting through swatches to take to CNCH, and the effect that gobsmacked me was how much more elastic yarns with many plies are.

I look at my spinning books and my knitting books and I do not see much discussion of the effect.

Certainly, I have been knitting gansey yarn for years without the effect seeming so noticeable.  Part of this that for a long time, I was knitting very tightly for warmth, and those fabrics did not display the yarns elasticity to best advantage.  Part of it is that I had to have tools for making better high-ply yarns see http://gansey.blogspot.com/2014/02/real-hand-spun-10-ply-aran-yarn.html , and with the accelerator, I can drive the jumbo flyer at 1,000 or even 1,600 rpm, so I can get the job done.

Most bobbin tension devices on Lazy Kates cause that the tension of the singles changes as the effective diameter of the bobbin decreases as the singles spool off the bobbins.  A tension box device as shown

Making 10-ply with blocked singles.

eliminates this problem and ensures more uniform tension.   It is scalable and works for 2-ply just as well as it works for 10-ply.

For 5-ply

 7-ply 

Other view showing final tension system. Note that no perforated plate to separate the yarn strands is required.  I stop twist from running back to the lazy Kate by running the strands over a quarter inch dowel held a couple of feet from the orifice.

 Other modern lazy Kate bobbin tension devices change tension as the effective diameter of the bobbin changes. This device does not. The one above is my prototype.  It is not pretty but it works very well.  For very high twist singles, more dowels can be added to increase more tension.

Will Taylor was back from his bird watching, and loved the fabrics made from high-yarns and this design for lazy kates. If you want one, ask Will.

More plies does make for better knitting yarns. More uniform tension among the singles makes for better yarns.

More Twist

Twist is what holds wool fiber together as yarn.   Within limits, more twist results in a more durable yarn.

Consider 10-ply Aran weight. (10 plies of 5,600 ypp singles)  Each single requires 9 tpi plus the 9 tpi to ply them together means the final yarn @ ~500 ypp requires 99 tpi to produce.  It is a remarkably elastic and durable yarn.  Just the thing to knit up for warm sweater to protect a loved one as he sets off to fish the wild and cold north Atlantic.  And, in a world where hand spinners are spinning boat loads of of 10s for weavers, a couple of pounds of 10- ply for a knitter is easy to obtain.  (I do not care what history says, I know what works. Women have always found ways to keep their loved ones warm.)

Gansey yarn is 5-plies of  5,600 ypp singles and requires ~ 54 tpi in total to produce. It is not as warm as 10-ply Aran, but then it is only half the weight of wool.  Again, by modern standards, 5-ply is a remarkably elastic and durable yarn. It is also warm, but I today I am saying that fabrics knit from yarns with more plies are more elastic.   And, in a world where hand spinners are spinning boat loads of of  10s for weavers, a couple of pounds of  5- ply for a knitter was easy to obtain.   It was known as wasset

Yes, fabric elasticity varies with knitting gauge and other things, but all else equal, fabrics knit from wool yarns with more plies are much more elastic.  And, a yarn with more plies or strands will be more durable than a yarn of the same grist with fewer plies or strands.  If I was going off to sea, I would rather have a sweater knit from real 10-ply made up from loom waste than a sweater knit from same grist yarn plied  up from 2 continuous plies.  The 10-ply would be warmer, and despite the plies not being continuous, the loom waste would be much more durable. Fabric knit for high elasticity will be knit more loosely knit than fabric knit for maximum warmth.   Sometimes we have enough wool and can afford the weight so that we can trade weight of wool for comfort.  Not all of us are subject to the strict weight limits of  a top man working in a tall ship where we need the most warmth for the least weight.

Aran weight made up from 5-plies of  2,900 ypp singles requires about 36 tpi to produce, and is a nice looking yarn that knits up into Aran stitch patterns better than any modern mill spun Aran ( e.g., 2 or 3-ply), but is not quite as durable as 10-ply Aran or even 5-ply gansey yarn.  On the other hand it is only a third the work of  10-ply Aran and 2/3 the work of  5-ply gansey yarn.  On the other hand, it is almost 4 times as much work to spin  as 2-ply Aran.  That IS why we see 2 and 3-ply Aran yarns.  2-ply and 3-ply Aran yarns are less work to produce, and thereby much, much cheaper.

The cheaper yarns are not nearly as durable as the higher-ply product.  Are you putting enough effort into your knitting that you want the object to endure? Or are you just knitting for kids that will out-grow the objects?  Or, are you just knitting objects that you intend to discard after this years fashion season?  What are  your goals for your objects?

The astute reader has guessed that the real  point of this post is sock yarn.  Sock yarn  is the modern hand spun yarn that still requires real durability. I have been re-reading Nancy Bush on Vintage Socks and confess myself disappointed. (I also had the original Weldon's open.)  The yarns and needles she suggests result in a sock that, for me, is too thick for business/ dress shoes, and too thin for boots.  I would be reduced to wearing those socks with my water sandals.  I suppose that people that wear such socks have a class of sport shoes that need socks of such weight.  I would like to point out that no where in the book is there a picture of such socks actually being worn. And, there is no discussion as to which heels and toes are comfortable under different conditions.  I have a wide foot, and I like to walk.  Thus, I need a  Kitchener stitch at the toe.  That is not discussed what so ever.  The idea of knitting a sock that is not functional is foreign to me.  I have no problem with making purely decorative items, but if I am going to knit a decorative item, it will be a shawl  or table cloth, and not socks that are pretty, but not comfortable.  If I am going to go to the bother of knitting a sock, it will be functional.  It will be as functional as I can make it.

 Traditional hosiery singles were worsted spun at 17 tpi - e.g., 40s or 22,400 ypp.  Modern sock yarn run 1,400 ypp, so that would be ~ 15 or 16-ply -- a yarn that requires a total of almost than 290 twists per inch to produce.  All of a sudden, the 10-ply Aran does not seem so twist/labor intensive.  However, traditionally hose were knit finer on needles sized between 1.0 and 1.55 mm.  On such fine needles a sock yarn of 6 hosiery plies works just fine and requires only about 120 twists per inch in total. And, 6 hosiery plies has a grist of just over 3,000 ypp and when knit on traditional needles produces a sock that will fit in my town shoes. And,  it wears like iron.  It works for folks like me that like to walk.  And, it is elastic.  It is so elastic that the vintage patterns when knit from fine 6-ply yarns even work for folks like me with wide feet.  It turns out that the Kitchener stitch is a crutch for cheap mill spun yarns with few plies.  If you like knitting with the thicker yarn, you can make 12-ply.  That is the glory of hand spinning.  However, if you have only knit with the modern yarns sold as sock yarns, this is outside of your range of experience.

The Vintage Patterns do work with the traditional hosiery yarns knit on fine needles, but the products are much less functional when knit with modern commercial sock yarns on larger needles as discussed by Bush.

Which bring us to the question of nylon and super wash.  I think that many fine plies improves wool's durability enough that the addition of nylon makes much less difference. However, I like medium wools such as Sufolk for socks.These are more durability that say Merino.   If I was making cheap sock yarn, I would add nylon because it is cheaper than wool and it would allow me to put less twist in the yarn for the same durability.  I make a similar argument for superwash technologies  --  worsted spun yarns, with fine plies, tolerate washing very well.  Super wash allows yarns with less twist or more woolen character to tolerate washing.  Drying is another matter. If you are going to  dry your woolies in the dryer, you NEED super wash technology.  However, fine spun worsted dries very well on a room temperature drying rack.

You are not going to get high twist, fine spun yarns from your local knitting yarn shop. Such yarns are expensive, and capital for inventory is limited. Dye is cheap, so you can have cheap yarns in any color. Twist is expensive, so you are not going to find many high twist yarns.  And not many modern knitters have the skills and tools to work with fine yarns so there is less demand for fine worsted yarns.  All in all, these days, there are not many of these yarns around.  If you want fine yarns, you are going to have to either make them or have them spun to order.  To experiment with these kinds of yarn try plying weaving warp yarns together. (e.g., cable 2 strands of 5,600 ypp warp to make a 4-strand 2,800 ypp yarn.)  This is less work than hand spinning hosiery singles.  This can give you a taste of the possible, but not the full effect. Plied rather than cabled yarn will give a smoother sock fabric. 6-ply  hosiery yarn is unlike anything you are likely to see in a modern commercial setting. It is fine lace weight, only stronger and smoother.  Sock fabric knit from 6-ply  hosiery yarn spun from long wool is smooth, silken to the touch, and durable.  (And, in black or navy blue, these yarns suck the light out of a room better and faster than Peruvian Darkness Powder.)

In that days when hand spinners were spinning boat loads of fine singles for weavers, fine knitting yarns were easy to come by. When I was spinning a lot of 10s, 10-ply Aran and 5-ply were easy to prepare.  As I spin more 40s for the shirting project, traditional  hosiery yarns are easy to prepare.

Competent hand spinners enable competent knitters.

(I find that I like to knit fine hosiery yarns using a leather knitting pouch rather than a knitting sheath.  And, for hosiery I like very flexible stainless steel needles, rather than my stiffer spring steel needles.  The 14" needles are easily available in sizes of 1.125 mm and larger.)

Twist and Grist

I have been accused of getting my twist numbers wrong.

That is unlikely.  I may have made a typo here or there, but over all, I am the one hand spinner that always knows his twist.   I use differential rotation speed (DRS) without slip to control twist insertion.  Once I install the whorls on the wheel, I know how much twist will be inserted.  If I want a thicker yarn, I do a more woolen preparation.  If I want a thinner yarn, I do a more worsted preparation, and thus I can get a range of yarns from particular whorl combination that inserts a specific twist.  However, I can always look at the whorls on my wheel and know how much twist is being inserted.

Thus, I have to know the twist for every yarn that I plan to make.  Once the whorls are (made and) installed -- the twist is set.  How fast I treadle does not affect inserted twist.  How fast I draft does not affect inserted twist.  Yarn build up on the bobbin does affect the effective diameter of the bobbins and hence rate of take up and hence twist.  However, this is a known factor that is predictable.

I know that when the whorls that produce 9 tpi are on the wheel, and I am spinning worsted I get 10s (5,600 ypp).  I have measured, and validated this hundreds of times.  I know that when the whorls that produce 17 tpi are on the wheel, I get 40s.  I have measured and validated this many times. I also have whorl combinations for 5s, 20s, 30s, 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s that have been have measured and validated. Each allows me to produce a specific grist of worsted and a different, specific grist of woolen and intermediate grists of semi-woolen and semi-worsted.

If I want to sit down and just play with a fiber, then I am likely to set the wheel up as single-drive, bobbin lead (Irish Tension).  Most of my plying of hanks of  5-ply  gansey yarn or 10-ply Aran weight are done using the Ashford ST Jumbo flyer. Thus, every week, I do work with ST and IT fliers. With IT or ST my twist is as fallible as anyone's. However, most of my spinning is done with DRS because it is more productive and my twist more precise.    Spending a lot of time working with precise twist makes me a better spinner when I am using ST or IT.  Sock weight yarns with large numbers of plys are plied using DRS control of  the AA #1 flier. This holds twist to within a few percent. That limits my sock yarns to skeins of about 10 grams or about 80 yards.  Small skeins are my penalty for demanding precise twist in my 6-ply sock yarns.

On the other hand, my WPI measurments tend not to be consistent with several other authors.  I worked with yarns of known grist and practiced doing WPI until my measured WPI for 5,600 ypp (10s) was a consistent 75,  my measured WPI for 11,200 ypp  was just over a hundred, my WPI for shirting or hosiery yarns was 150, and etc. This seems different from other authors, but most do not write about spinning this fine. In every case, my WPI tests were done with worsted spun rather than woolen yarns., and this may explain some of the difference. However,  I always pack to refusal, because it provides more consistent results. At this time, I do not trust my WPI for woolen spun yarns.  It is likely off by 10 % when it should be accurate to 6%.  Thus, to get the grist of woolen yarns I weigh a measured length.

I think some authors do not pack to refusal, so their WPI and hence estimated grist and required twist are different from my numbers.  My numbers work - consistently.

The last descent

Recently, one of my wife's college roommates gave me a big bump of Maine top.   It has  a spin count of around 55, and a nice luster.  The first thing I did is spin spin some 10s, and ply them up into 5-ply sport weight.  They used lanolin as combing oil, so there is residual oil on the fiber.  If it sits exposed to air, the lanolin will oxidize and turn to gunk. It (5#!) has to be spun and washed.  No time to dilly-dally around spinning 40s.

It spins fast and easy.  I like to wave the California flag and buy local wool, but this stuff comes all washed and combed at about the price I have been paying for raw fleece.  And, the resulting yarns are lustrous,  but much softer than the MacAusland yarns that I have used  for outdoor wear the past.  As a gansey yarn, this is much more lustrous than the mill spun gansey yarns.  Ok, you will have to dye it, but how hard is that?

Spun worsted, With 5-plies, these softer yarns are more durable than the harsher 2 and 3-ply MacAusland yarns.   And, they are much more durable than the mill spun 5-ply gansey yarns. Compared with the various Romney 5-ply sport yarns that I have spun over the last 5 years, this is much easier than washing and combing a fleece; and, less expensive than buying combed Romney top, but the final yarn/fabric is just as good.  

I swatched the 5-ply starting with 3 mm needles. I would knit an inch, knit a row of garter, switch to the next finer needle, and knit another inch. Then, I wash and block the swatch.  For myself, I like the fabric knit with 1.55 mm needles.  It is amazingly thin, light, weatherproof, warm, and durable.  My wife wants a cooler, more elastic and stretchy fabric, so for her we like the fabric knit on 1.9 mm needles.   It is smooth and comfortable for sustained wear against the skin. Even my wife does not complain that it is "itchy".  And, it can be treated very roughly and it does not shrink. 

I was a bit amused at this, as last fall almost all of my knitting was still being done on 2.4 mm needles. Now as I look through my knitting bag, and the WIP around my knitting chair, the only WIP  on 2.4 mm needles is a pair of sandal socks in eastern cross stitch using 6-strand cabled 800 ypp yarn.   Just now, my main project is a sweater for myself in worsted spun, 6-strand cabled fingering on 1.65 mm needles.

After 15 years of knitting, my default knitting needles are all smaller than 2 mm, and the yarns that I like are not found in knitting shops.  I am starting to identify with those old knitters using "knittn pins".  I like the fabrics. These days, I like yarns cabled up from mill spun warp, and I love my hand spun.  I would knit the sandal socks from hand spun (on smaller needles), but I have stash that needs to be knit. 

Halcyon sells the Maine top fiber at $16/lb, and it needs little additional prep for spinning.  With GUERNSEY 5-PLY WOOL at $26/lb, the question is, "Is hand spun worth the effort?". 

I spin 10s at ~350 yards per hour, so spinning while I watch the TV news (talking heads) produces  500 yards of  finished sport weight 5-ply per week.  That is enough 5-ply yarn for a sweater every month. I figure that spinning is free, so for all practical purposes, that yarn is free. If I had to pay for the fiber, it would cost me $16/lb.

Since I have moved to smaller knitting needles, my knitting time for a sweater has increased. Thus, using a better yarn seems more worth while. Over the last year, hand spun has moved from being reasonable to being ordinary.  Now, knitting mill spun is the exception. 

The great disconnect

The best weavers in history were the professional hand weavers.
The best knitters in history were the professional knitters.
The best spinners in history were the professional spinners.

There are still a few professional hand weavers around, and they are very good, but we no longer have whole guilds of them where they can exchange ideas and compete.  And, they no longer have sources of fine hand spun yarns.  It is only by doing something everyday, in the company of other talented professionals, and in competition with those talented professionals that one can become the best. And, one produces the best product by working with the best materials.  Modern weavers are very limited by the lack of fine hand spun yarns.  Spinning has disconnected from its heritage of providing fine yarns for fine weaving.

First, the professional needs professional tools.  Tools used by professionals are different than the tools used by amateurs.   Professionals are always concerned about production rates and capital cost. Whatever else they are, a professional's tools are always cost effective.

Consider spinning. Good spinning is at the heart of any superior textile.  What modern spinning wheel is cost effective?  Babe - not expensive, but not highly productive.  Alden Amos's wheels are easy to spin on; but as built are limited to ~ around 2,400 rpm -- that imposes an absolute limit on how fast one can spin fine yarn.
If I am a good spinner, then I can draft fine yarns at 5 or 6 yards per minute, and I do not want a wheel that limits me to 3 or 4 yards per minute. No, because then I am only making half as much as I am capable, and that half capacity is likely the difference between possible and not possible projects.

I have been reading about weaving in the old days and the loom's web for a bolt (80 yd) of fine cloth required about 800 hanks of yarn, supplied by ~10 hand spinners.   That means the spinners averaged 80 hanks every 6 weeks or something over 2 hanks per day of  22,400 ypp singles.  Modern spinners cannot conceive of spinning that much yarn because they have been trained to spin slowly. And, they have been trained to use spinning wheels that spin slowly.

It has taken me 5 years to learn how to spin fine yarns fast. Why so long?  Because there were not other spinners that that spun fine yarns, fast.  Another reason is that there are no longer commercially available hand spinning wheels that will spin fast.

On paper, some wheels have a drive ratio that suggests that they are designed to insert twist at 4 or 5 thousand revolutions per minute.  Do they?  Check with your tachometer.  You don't have a tachometer? Then, get one!  Every serious spinner needs a tachometer and a small microscope.  Sell one of your wheels and buy some serious tools.  You can buy a tachometer mail order and have it in your hands in less than a week for less than $50.  Or, sit down at one of those fast wheels and see if the wheel will spin 140 yards of 40s (22,400 ypp)  in 48 minutes, because that is a minimum of how fast it must be to spin 80 hanks in 6 weeks.  That means those wheels were averaging 2,100 rpm, and sometimes they were going faster.   And, this is just for 40s. Fines require a third more twist.  If you are spinning fines, you will want a spinning wheel that goes a third faster.  If you want to average 2.4 hanks of  fines per day, you will want a wheel that will average 3,000 rpm. Such a wheel will let you spin 10s (5,600 ypp) pretty much as fast as you can draft. That is nice.  It is better than a video game. Suddenly, spinning is less boring.

All of a sudden the virtues of an accelerator wheel become very, very apparent.  In the old days when a spinner's income was depended on how fast the spinner could spin, accelerator wheels were more common.  In my case, where I spin because I want the yarn, the advantages of an accelerator wheel are obvious. An accelerator wheel lets me spin as fast as I can draft.

The great disconnect is that the best spinners were talented professionals that both exchanged ideas and competed. They produced quality yarns, and they worked fast.  Fine woven textiles require fine yarns. And fine woven textiles are more valuable than coarse textiles.  The coarse textiles of traditional subsistence cultures have their virtues, but these virtues are very different from the virtues of  luxury textiles made by professionals for an export market.

A professional spinner with the requisite skill, could make more more income by spinning finer yarns. A professional with the requisite skill, could make more more income by spinning faster.   The best spinners had faster wheels. And that was true from the first introduction of driven spindles.  Ok, you claim to be a better spinner with a faster wheel, can you spin 2 or 3 hanks of worsted shirting per day?  You want to earn my respect?  Spin  an ounce of shirting yarn in a day.  Look at that little bobbin of yarn. To somebody that has never spun such a bobbin of yarn, it is not very impressive. Wind that little single into a skein, and you will understand why I like little bobbins, tension boxes,  and sectional beams.  Spinners have disconnected from all of this, and no longer understand little bobbins, tension boxes, and sectional beams.

To say that one is a competent spinner is say that one can produce the yarn required for high-quality textiles. - including fine woven textiles.  And yet, spinning fine and fast has been lost from the definition of what is a competent spinner.  Many fiber festivals have spinning contests - who can spin with gloves on, who can spin while blind folded and etc.  Very few fiber festivals have contests on who can just spin fine and fast, e.g., how many hanks can you spin from 10 grams of fiber in an afternoon?  My  original definition of a competent spinner was someone that could spin wool at its spin count.  As a weaver, I have to add, that a competent spinner can spin wool at its spin count at a good commercial pace - otherwise I will never finish the yarn for my next weaving project.  Only being able to spin fine and fast makes that project remotely feasible.

Consider a master's spinning program (e.g., http://www.oldscollege.ca/continuing-education/special-interest/fibre/master-spinner-off-campus-course-offerings/index) and they are talking about 6:1 ratio wheels.  If the student has a  - cadence of 90 treadles/minute, then the twist inserted is 540 rpm. If one is spinning yarn for weaving shirting, then that is less than 40 yards per hour - not what I would call the output of a master spinner. And, in the context of weaving project requiring half a million yards (800 hanks), not a useful yarn output at all. Their tpi chart goes up to 12 tpi, that will get you to 11,200 ypp worsted or 5,600 ypp woolen, but that is only the tip of the iceberg of what can be spun.  Shirting is 22,400 ypp, and wants about 20 tpi for warp and ~ 24 tpi for the woolen weft, so they are not even thinking about fine yarns for fine cloth. One expects a master spinner to be able to spin anything that a weaver might need, including fines for a lady's shawl. There is nothing in the syllabus that says, "Oh by the way, a master spinner can spin fine and fast."  The syllabus suggests that the mark of a master spinner is the ability to do a workbook.

No! No! No! The mark of a master spinner is ability and elan to make the yarns used to make great textiles. Competent spinners can make the yarns necessary to making any ordinary textile including shirting, suiting, underwear, and household linens. The competent spinner spins all of these with excellent quality, and spins them fast enough to make useful quantities.  The master spinner goes a step farther and finds a way to make their yarn exceptional.  The master spinner teaches, so that the next generation of competent spinners spin better yarn.  Then, the next generation of master spinners, must find some way to make their yarn exceptional. Being a master spinner is about always finding a way to spin better.

The  master spinner enables the master weaver.

iron spindles

see ART OF WEAVING f BY HAND AND BY POWER, WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ACCOUNT OF ITS RISE AND PROGRESS IN ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES. fOR THE USE Of MANUFACTURERS AND OTHERS. BY CLINTON G. .GILROY/

page 11 of the introduction.

Don't like it?  Argue with the Gilroy, not me.

Experience

I worked for various Bechtel companies.  Our stock in trade was doing things that had never been done before.  We would build things bigger than anyone else.  We would do things cheaper than anyone else.  We would do things safer than anyone else. And, we would do things better than anyone else.

So, consider hand weaving.  It is not dangerous to the weaver.  There are no public policy issues (e.g., release of hazardous or radioactive materials into densely populated areas). And, there are huge amounts of reference materials on the topic.  There are very few consequence for failure.  There is no reason to be afraid.   On the other hand, many of the practical skills for hand weaving, have been forgotten. People say that I do not have the experience, so I cannot do it. Nobody alive has the experience!  Does that mean it can not be done?   No! what has been done, can be done again. Why is that that people have not tried something spend so much effort telling me what I can't do?

I think it is worthwhile to try and rediscover some of the old weaving skills.  If you think those skills are still out there, then show me a recently made bolt of hand spun, hand woven wool shirting fabric.

Somebody needs the experience. It might as well be me.

The Accelerator Revisited

It has been weeks since I made another version of the accelerator. With this version I have spun, plied, and cabled miles and miles of yarn.  It works.

With the accelerator, the Ashford Jumbo flier (ST) will run at between 1,000 and 1,600 rpm.  I was very pleasantly surprised at how well it works, running at over 1,200 rpm.   The Ashford Lace Flyer (ST) will run at just under 3,000 rpm. And the AA competition flier will run fast enough to spin woolen fines at 300+ yards per hour. This is all  much faster than I ever approached just using tiny whorls - even with elaborate bumpless drivebands and careful attention to whorl profiles.  All in all, everything runs about twice as fast as I could get it to go without an accelerator wheel. On the other hand, I do have a double treadle wheel and am willing to treadle hard.  I expect that a single treadle wheel would only go half as fast.  I also go through drivebands fairly rapidly and I use a lot of driveband dressing.  I keep an oil bottle of Royal Purple handy and I oil everything frequently.

This is not to say that driveband slip is always bad.  It can also act as a clutch in single drive systems to help avoid break off when spinning higher grist singles.  Another advantage of DRS DD is being able to come up to full spinning speed much faster without breaking the fine yarn.

I also have given up understanding why modern wheel makers have become so fixated on screw devices to control the tension of  drivebands.   Such devices make it hard to get reproducible levels of drive band tension, and almost ensure high loads on flyer bearings.

 The Ashford standard DD fliers will run at near 1,800 rpm with the accelerator.   Years ago, when I first tried to get the Ashford standard DD flyers to go faster, I thought the limiting factor was that the flyers were not balanced and that they had a high aerodynamic cross section. Now I think it more likely that the problem is that the Ashford DD axles flex at the joint with the flyer whorl and cause the vibration.

I took half of the heck array (hooks) out of the Ashford (ST)  Lace Flyer, and with ball bearings at each end, it runs twice as fast with an accelerator as it ever did without the accelerator. Without an accelerator, the drive ratio said it would go this fast, but it never did.    The new speed was a pleasant surprise.  I dislike having the whorls at the front so that there is a long barrel that the yarn must be threaded through.  

Somehow the net productivity of spinning on the Ashford Lace Flyer is not nearly as high as with the Alden Amos fliers.    Thus, these days, all the spinning of singles  is done on the AA fliers, 2-ply is made on the Lace Flyer which will hold full hank of  5,600 ypp 2-ply, and big stuff is assembled on the Jumbo.

Experts

I was told by "experts" that kitting sheaths are not useful.
I was told by "experts" that weatherproof  fabric could not be knit.
I was told by "experts" that what ever they knit firmly was a warm as warm could be.
I was told by "experts" that I could not spin fast and fine, and that I was silly and stupid to try and spin fast.
I was told by "experts" that differential rotation speed (DRS) controlled double drive systems do not work                                        without slipage.
I was told by "experts" that "gansey yarn" was never, and could not be hand spun.
I was told by  "experts" that real hand spun 10-ply Aran weight yarn could not be produced.
I was told by  "experts" that CPW were the fastest wheels available.
I was told by "experts" that swaving is not swaving.
I was told by  "experts" that twist insertion on a flyer/bobbin assembly wheel was by the flyer.
I was told by  "experts" that high speed steel (HSS) scrapers could be sharpened by "burnishing".  (It was                                          wood turning, but they were mostly spinners, making spindles.)
I was told by  "experts" that accelerators on spinning wheels were not useful.
I was told by  "experts" that flyer/bobbins are always slower than great wheels.
I was told by "experts" that sectional beams are not needed for fine weaving.

and etc.

All of the above expert opinions are wrong, but they are the conventional wisdom that is recited over and over again.  That first item about knitting sheaths has been in the echo chamber since before the days of Mary Thomas (1938).

Am I storing up "hurts" and resentment?  No, I track what works, and what others tell me works.  The above are mostly the result of people of limited breadth of experienced talking about things for which they have no direct experience.  There is a difference between having 30 years of experience and having 2 years of experience, 15 times.

I know! I know, I was warned,  Feynman warned us that anytime the assembled experts say anything, always do the math yourself.  However, the textile world has a problem with its experts.  They are frequently wrong, and they are rarely challenged by the community.   The community has a huge respect for the conventional wisdom, and the community rarely tests the conventional wisdom.

However, when I go against the "boss-cow" experts, I am challenged.  Authority in the recreational and academic textile world is by seniority rather than by merit and quality of information.  Yes, at this point I am not friendly towards the conventional wisdom of the modern recreational textile world.  I find that every time that I refute the conventional wisdom, many become rude.  I have been through this cycle more than a dozen times in the last 15 years.  I am wary, and I  might seem a bit hateful, but yes, I have reason.

I like my experts to know what they are talking about and get things correct. I claim to be a scientist, not an expert on textiles. Likely, I know more about knitting sheaths than anyone else in the world today, but I do not claim to be an "expert".  Any master knitter in the 16th century knew more about (some kinds) of knitting sheaths than I do.  

For example, people that have never worked with knitting-sheath knit fabrics assume that any hand knit fabric is as good.   This is false! That is like saying a thumb tack pushed in with bare fingers holds wooden beams together as well as a 16d framing nail driven in with a carpenter's hammer.  Both the knitting sheath and the carpenter's hammer provide leverage to multiply force. Smash your thumb with a carpenter's hammer and you know it provides more force than your bare fingers. However, somebody that has never worked with big carpenter's nails, does not know how strong they can be. And, I promise that for somebody that only knows about thumb tacks, real carpenter's nails driven with a hammer are a revelation.  Likewise, somebody that has never worn a fabric knit with a knitting sheath just does not know just how warm a "hand knit" garment can be. No amount of knitting tight with hand held needles can prepare one for what a knitting sheath can do. Wear a sweater knit with a knitting sheath in a storm, and you know that it is knit tighter.  Nobody can get that kind of tight with hand held needles.  Human tendons and muscle will not get you there, you need extra leverage. Knitting sheaths with "gansey needles" are the difference between knitting a fine, weatherproof fisherman's shirt in a few days, and it taking a full year to knit.  Knitting sheaths with curved, rotating needles are a game changer when it come to knitting fine gloves.  Unless you have a knitting sheath and have learned how to use it very well, such fabrics are outside of your experience.  No hand knitting without a knitting sheath comes close.  I know, I spent 5 or 6 years knitting as tight as possible without a knitting sheath.  In those days, I was a good rock climber, and  I kept my hands and arms very strong.  I know exactly how tight it is possible to knit without a knitting sheath.

I keep little lists of what people say works, but which I cannot get to work.  I keep lists of what works for me, but others tell me (do not, should not, could not, would not) work.  This blog is part of that system of lists, along with my knitting, spinning, and weaving journals.  I keep lists of the best way I know how to do something.  When I find a better way, I cross the old way out, and write in the new, better way.  These lists are never finished, because there is always, always, always a better way. Every work procedure is a compromise between quality, schedule, and resources.  Sometimes the better way is just a different compromise solution.  Sometime schedule is more important than quality.  Sometimes it is better to have poor mittens than no mittens!!

All of the different compromises work, they are not wrong.  What is wrong is when somebody says knitting sheaths are not useful to knitting.  Knitting sheaths may not be required for the current project, but in the long run, they allow knitting faster, knitting more ergonomically, and knitting fabrics that cannot realistically be hand knit without a knitting sheath.

When I published an account of my first hot rod wheel, I was told by a "boss-cow" spinner/ expert that I was stupid and silly to try such a thing.  A better response would have been a technical discussion of drive belt physics, swept areas, and whorl profiles, but this expert provided none of that.  She merely called me stupid and silly, and her style always includes scatological references.  A few years later she bragged about having about a wheel with a similar ratio from a big name wheel maker.  And, she apologized to me.

Most of the experts that told me stuff that was wrong have not apologized. One of the experts that first told me knitting sheaths were not useful, now writes on the history of knitting sheaths, and proclaims herself an expert on them. She also told me that "5-ply gansey yarn" had never been spun by hand, and could not be spun by hand.  She has since back tracked on that issue. However, she still jabs at me every time I say anything outside of the conventional wisdom. She also denies most of the history of English fishing.

Pretty much everything that I have fond most useful, are things that were outside of the conventional wisdom in recreational textiles.   Spinning faster facilitates spinning finer.  And, spinning finer facilitates better yarns- and with better yarns one's knitting and weaving improves.  Better textiles begin with better yarn.  I do not regret any time spent improving my spinning.

With better yarn comes better knitting.  The better my spinning, the more I enjoy knitting.  The better my spinning, the better my knit objects.  It is all about the yarn.  Hand spinning provided all kinds of wonderful yarns in the past, but which are no longer made as mill spun. If you want to replicate the look, feel, and quality of  some traditional knit objects, you need different yarns  than the mills are selling to recreational knitters these days. The only way to get those yarns is the spin them yourself.  However, you need a vision of the final object in mind as you plan the yarn.  Without that vision, your handspun will be no better than the mill spun you and everyone else have been using.

I will freely admit that setting up, using and maintaining a DRS controlled double drive system requires skill, and on-going attention to maintenance. However, the rewards in better spinning are also great. Most spinners even neglect to oil their wheels and cannot in any way be expected to understand or maintain a DRS system.  Many modern spinners even think that the flyer inserts twist.  With that world view it is not possible to manage a DRS system in any way, shape, or form.  With that world view, the spinner will never see the benefits of DRS.  There are advantages to learning physics and being able to do math.

Finally, if you go to a major fiber show, and talk to all the interesting people, you can be pretty sure that some of them have seen and admired my work.  If I am writing about something, it is because I have been working on it long enough to have a working prototype that shows advantages.  By the time I write about it, the local guild, and other textile people have seen it work.  Your saying that it (does not, should not, could not, would not) work only shows your lack of experience on the topic.

By the time I wrote about accelerators here,  I had made 8 or 9 prototypes and figured out how to make the concept work very well.  When I wrote here,  I had already demonstrated that the concept had large advantages.  AA reminded me of images I had seen as a child.  Then, I tested the concept.  It worked.  That was the only reference that I needed.  Anyone that doubted the concept could make one for themselves and find that;  Yes, it did work!   I had already seen that "Oh, My!!' moment when a much faster wheel made spinning fine much easier.  And, this was years past the time when I had moved to high ratio whorls to get more speed for spinning "lace weight" singles.  The power of the accelerator is that it changes swept area and reduces drive band slip.  This was another,  Oh, My!! moment.  A sudden understanding that even more speed makes spinning even finer, even easier!   It was another surprise.  By then, having people whining about lack of references was silly. The time to complain about lack of references is before the working model is perfected.  The accelerator works today on an Ashford.   "It works!" is the only reference that I need.  If you need more references or citations, you can find them yourself.  Your need for academic citations is not my problem.  My problem is only to have the best tools that I can have.

Why did not all the experts warn me of this effect?  Where in all of the advice on spinning fine is the very important fact that spinning faster, makes spinning finer easier?    Sure, there are other factors, but spinning fast helps --  a lot.

It has become clear that many of the skills that I need for weaving fine woolen cloth have been lost. I will have to rediscover the tools and techniques.  It will take hundreds of hours before I turn out a fine hand spun, hand woven, woolen fabric. Yes, I have a pile of problems in front of me.  My advantage is that I can just use any solution that works, without demanding academic citations for everything.  And, I am past worrying about what the experts say.



 

The Crux of Sectional beams

The essence of a "sectional beam" is not the mechanical structure on the loom, but how the weaver uses it.

Any warp beam that rotates can be used as a sectional beam. And, any culture that understands carts, can construct beams that rotate.   For vertical, warp-weighted loom, all that is required is to scribe lines on the beam to delineate the sections of the beam.  The the warp can be wound on the beam, stored, and wound off as needed.   Looms designed for weaving long bolts of cloth do require pegs or pins in the beam to support the sections of warp as they are wound on, but it it is very easy to insert such pegs in a beam. Little "L" brackets held in place with duct tape work.  Nails work. These approaches will not satisfy some prissy recreational weaver, but they will allow winding wool singles onto the loom at hand, right now.  And, a very good tension box can be improvised from a bit of plywood and some wooden dowels from the hardware store. Two thousand years ago, making a tension box was no harder than making little stool - a easy morning's work.  I could drive to Jackson, buy any one of Stephenie's little looms, convert it to a sectional beam, and be winding warp on it, section by section, by night fall.  (Or I could use the sectional beam on my AVL as a warping mill, prepare a warp under tension and then wind it on the little loom.)  The crux of the idea is keeping wool singles (each and every one) under tension at all times as the loom is warped.

A sectional beam on a modern loom has additional features for recreational weavers, but these were not required for industrial weavers of the late Roman Era and Middle Ages. They would weave to the end of their warp, wind on another warp (section by section) tie the two warps together, and weave on with minimum waste, and very little effort. There is no reason why the 2-beam, horizontal loom of  the late Roman and early Middle Ages could not have used sectional warp beams.   The difference between an "ordinary" beam and a sectional beam is a hand full of wooden pegs that can be inserted or removed as the kind of cloth being made changes. (And, minor differences in how the warp is tied to the beam.)  Once you have thought about it the concept is easy and logical.  It is only hard if you think about a sectional beam as a device, rather than as a way of using a beam that rotates.  For the real weaver, "sectional beam" is a way of warping rather than a mechanical device.  It is a set of procedures and techniques for keeping warp singles under tension and under control at all times.

A second approach that works for industrial weaving  is to have a sectional warping mill that is warped section by section, and then the entire warp is wound on to the warp beam of the loom as required.  One such mill can support several looms and avoid down time of the looms and their weavers. It is the same concept, just moved off the loom to separate operation. For details see the old texts on industrial weaving.

Do I see such mills in modern weaving classrooms?  No. And, I bought the only loom with a sectional beam from the largest local weaving classroom.  50 weavers (many very advanced) and nobody was using sectional warping.) They gave me a good price on that loom, because nobody was using it. Sectional beams are not needed for mill spun (2-ply) wool warps, or silk, or linen, and few people weave with fine hand spun wool singles these days.  On the other hand, there is a large class of traditional  wool fabrics that can only be woven from the fine wool singles that are easier to handle when warped under tension (e.g., section by section).

The evidence for sectional beam looms is in the fabrics produce in the Late Roman and Early Middle Ages. To understand the evidence, one must understand working with fine wool singles. That means getting out your spinning wheel and spinning "fines".

Fine wool fabric from warp weighted looms

Those old timers made nice fabrics.  We see small samples of fabric where the were protected from decay by to toxic effects of metal buttons.

I see the fabrics, and I ask, "How did they make them?"  What tools and skills did they have?

The archaeology field reports say they had loom weights, and the published papers go on to conclude that they actually had the entire loom.  :  )

OK, but was that loom used for that sample of fabric, or some linen or hemp or nettle or other material that has been lost?  Hard to say.

The fabric was traded great distances, so they made a lot of that fabric, and were really good at it.  Did that sample of fabric come from that set of loom weights, or did that set of loom weights support another trade network, or was that loom used for a local product that was not traded?

So, I sit there and I look at the picture of that Bronze Age stone floor with its little piles of loom weights, and I note that no Bronze Age organic artifacts were found in the structure.  The user's manual for the loom was missing. There was no artwork, no jewelry, no potsherds, and no fabric samples. The fabric samples are from a grave of the same period, but many miles away.

And she wants me to prove that they had sectional beam and tension box.

I had spin some replica yarns.   I trie them on various approaches to warping, and I come away with a new appreciation for the skill of the weavers of that sample of fabric.  It is easier if I block the yarn, so I worked on blocking the yarn for a while (months),  but that changed the nature of the fabric. 

There are only so many ways to warp a loom.  One can take a sample of proposed warp and see how it behaves with each approach to warping.  If there are several approaches to warping that work with that single we cannot say, they likely did it this way or that way.  However, if there seems to be only one way that is plausible given the technologies of the time, we can say they likely did it this way.

Do I care how they made that fabric? No, I just want to make fabric that is as good or better.  Is this a scholarly journal? No!  Am I being paid for my research? No.  I just want to reverse engineer a way to make fabric as good or better.  Along the way, I am going to announce my conclusions and observations.  I am going to throw out any ideas that I have.  And I think like Sherlock Holmes.

By a process of reverse engineering and elimination, we get to warping the loom with a sectional beam, tension box, and bobbins.  This is for a fine wool warp, not silk, not linen, not hemp, and not nettles.  My understanding is that only way to get the fabric that I want is to use unblocked singles.  So, I need some way to keep the singles under tension at all times.  If they get loose for a minute, they are likely to tangle, and if they tangle, they are likely to break, or at least burn daylight as I untangle them.

Data and  lack thereof

Note discussion of  Body Wrapping 3 on page 26  et seq of http://www.gutenberg.org/files/25731/25731-h/25731-h.htm  

And note the discussion on Roman and Greek art related to weaving on pg 33 of the same text.

Note that Roman looms do not survive, but that the Romans are presumed to have had 2-beam horizontal looms because of some of the fabrics that do survive.  However, these are not mentioned by any Roman authors, and the first depictions are in the middle ages.

Note discussion of Roman looms and lack of documentation at http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/periodicals/cr_16.pdf  page 552.  Note the problems with the draftsmanship on one of the depictions as finished cloth appears where we would expect the warp weights to be. This is pretty typical of art and technology. 

If we look in; The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, Volume 1, we see on page 121 that an advanced type of loom (horizontal, 2- beam) was in Germanic Europe as early as the Sixth century.

What we do not have; is good documentation of that South Asian loom that made Body Wrapping 3 above.  What we have is a very fine, very early fabric from some loom in Southern Asia for which we have no description or depiction. The depictions of Egyptian looms are all of weaving linen.

Let us return to the excellent depiction of Telemachus and Penelope in front of Penelope's loom. It was done 1,100 years after the Trojan war (and time of Telemachus and Penelope) . Hardly a depiction of current loom technology.  And, we note that the loom contains an extra beam to hold extra warp. That extra beam was a prototype of a sectional beam.  By its nature, the beam can be divided into sections and yarn wound on each section. They were making carts and know how to make axles, rotating wheels, and beams.  

 If it is the traditional loom that Penelope would have used in the Bronze Age, then it is not likely the loom in use in Classical Greece at the time of the depiction. If it is the loom in use in the Classical Greek Era, then it is not likely the loom used in the Bronze Age. This is not what I would call good contemporary documentation of a loom.  So it is with the other Greek art related to weaving.  Basically we have a gap in western loom documentation from the Middle Kingdom to the Middle Ages.

That is exactly how I would make a vertical, weighted-warp loom.  I would wind the warp on a back beam, and run each thread through a weight and  and tie it to the top beam.  Then, I set my beam holding the extra warp behind the loom with the weights hanging down to provide tension. Then, I could wind finished cloth onto the top beam, and unwind additional warp from the additional beam.  The weights do not even have to be tied to the warp, but can slide along the warp providing continuous tension to keep the warp on both sides of the weight from tangling. Do I need to make you a model of such a loom?  

There is no reason in the world why a sectional beam can not be used with warp weights on a vertical loom to manage long warps when weaving bolts of cloth.  And, it greatly speeds the work.  It is how a professional weaver would do it.  No, it is not in the record, but it has been a thousand years since an industrial weaver has used vertical, weighted-warp loom technology, and we may have forgotten some things.  I expect a weaver's  loom to be constructed with the same skill as a miller's water mill or a blacksmith's trip hammer.  I see a weaver's loom as a capital investment that was expected to generate income for a very long time, and some care would be taken so that the weaver could work as fast as possible to generate as much income as possible.  I am not talking about subsistence weaving.  I am talking about a tool for a talented professional weaver turning out cloth that appeals to the rich and powerful, thousands of miles away -- as in Body Wrapping 3 getting to Egypt from South Asia.

The Noble Art of Rolags

Your birch dowel has a grain. Find the end that the rolag slides off easily.  Mark it.  Then slice the dowel in half, lengthwise to produce 2 - half cylinders.  Sand the cut surfaces until they do not snag your
 fiber. This is your better rolag form.

These days, I like 2- gram rolags.  I load just over 10 grams of  fine fiber onto the drum carder and run it through several times.  Then, I lift one end of the batt and clamp it between the flat sides of my birch rolag form, and roll the dowel 1.5 rotations to lift and wrap the batt around the rolag form.  Then, I lift the form slightly as I rotate the form another half rotation.  Thus, the last bit of fiber is drafted around the rolag to hold it together.  The form is slid out one piece at a time to leave a perfect  8" long, 2-gram rolag.

At ~22,400 ypp, I use 3 rolags per spinning bobbin of single, and wind off every time I accumulate ~280 yards of  single on the spinning bobbin.

The circumference of the carding drum is ~20" so I get 5 rolags per batt.  Four batts / 20 rolags less some wastage produce one woolen hank of 1,600 yards.

I spin a bobbin in about 20 minutes, so net production is near 700 yards per hour, but I can put 1,600 yards on the storage bobbin in a couple of 2 hours if I hurry.    More commonly is 2 bobbins per hour as I watch DVDs with my wife in the evening.  The wind-off process is noisy, so I end up sitting there with a full bobbin.

This is weft.   It is not a pretty single for knitting lace. It will be woven in a twill,  fulled, teased, and clipped.  It will be a very nice shirting fabric, with one smooth warp face and the other a short, soft nap.

Fiber prep for high speed woolen

Good spinning requires good fiber preparation.  Spinning very fine and very fast requires near perfect fiber preparation.

My first fines were all worsted, so early on, I climbed the learning curve for combing wool.

Now that I need fine woolen spun singles for weaving, I am climbing the woolen prep learning curve.  It is just as long and steep, as the worsted combing learning curve.  For a long time, I would divide a batt from a drum carder length-wise, and call  what I spun from that "woolen".    Well, it was more woolen than the worsted singles I spun for ganseys.  It was/is  really semi-woolen.  Spun slowly, it could be mostly woolen and that was good enough for my needs.  And, in fact I preferred that semi-woolen yarn because it was denser, warmer, more durable.  It was/is a very nice knitting yarn that I still like.

Now, I am thinking bout woven fabrics that are "fulled".  And, fulling requires true woolen spun weft. A lot of it, so to get enough of it to be useful, I have to spin very fast.

To spin true woolen, the fiber prep must be carded and then rolled up into a rolag. Spinning fine and fast requires a uniformity in the fiber prep that one is not going to get with hand cards. If you are spinning fast, you need high uniformity from throughout the rolag and from rolag to rolag.  This kind of uniformity requires blending with drum carder.  If you try to spin rolags from hand cards fast and fine, there will be break-offs that will slow you down, until net productivity is higher simply by spinning much slower so that one has some time to adapt so that there are fewer break-offs.

If you must spin fine and fast, you will need the uniformity in you rolags that comes only from very good fiber prep tools. Details matter.  I had been rolling rolags on 3/8" acrylic cores.  Henry Clems suggested that I use use  a 1/2" birch core. That 1/8 inch in diameter, and difference in texture matters.  Half-inch birch is better than half-inch acrylic.  Half-inch birch is better than 3/8" birch. And, 3/4" is too big.  And, if the cores make that much difference, the quality of the carding cloth makes more difference.  Anyway, it turns out that making rolags is a major art from.

These days, Henry and Roy (Clems and  Clems) are the smartest guys on woolen fiber preparation, and they make the best tools for fiber preparation.  (This does not mean that I think 1/2" birch dowel is the very best possible rolag form in the world, but I would agree that it is likely the most cost effective.) These days, their drum carders and blending boards are without equal.   At this point they have hit a nice compromise between the makers of the tools using the tools on a daily basis, and industrial production techniques to achieve outstanding uniformity and quality control at a reasonable price point.   They have gotten to the point where they are starting to have a waiting list.  At this point the waiting list is only a few days, but if you are going to need fiber prep tools this summer, order now.

If you know that you only want to spin one kind of fleece, then one of the drum carders with changeable drums makes sense.  However, I spin about equal parts long wool and fine wool, and I like being able to card both of them on the same carder.

A bit off topic, true woolen requires more twist per inch  than worsted.  The difference is small at low grist, but at  higher grist, the difference is about 50%.  If you want to spin fine, and have a slow (low ratio) wheel, then spin worsted.  I find spinning worsted fines to be reasonable on a slower wheel, but spinning woolen fines on a low ratio wheel is always a long, slow, slog.  Spinning fine is made much easier with a very fast wheel.  Fine yarns that were very difficult on a slow wheel become easy on a fast flyer.  Fine yarns that are easy on a fast flyer are much more difficult on a slow flyer.  This is true at, and well beyond, the spin count.  

Fast Woolen Yarn

Once again, I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

Woolen can be spun very fast, it just takes a different fiber prep.

The result is a nice hollow core, fluffy yarn.

More later.

The Accelerator

Yarns "made up" in the process of tuning the accelerator. From top to bottom, 6-strand cabled fingering weight from 2-ply commercial warp, 5-ply semi-worsted sport weight from Romney, and 5-ply woolen sport weight from Rambouillet.

The beast that spawned them:

Top with Ashford Jumbo flyer used at speeds of 1,600 to 1,000 rpm ( the two skeins of cable were done as one big bobbin full.) And, below is the AA #0 (Competition) flier used at speeds of 2,400 to 4,200 rpm.

The Jumbo flyer has 4 drive whorls.  One would expect that the little 1.75" whorl to give more speed than the 2.75" whorl, but there is so much slippage that it does not. Spinning wheel drive belts slip a great deal. Still with the accelerator, and using the larger whorls, plying/cabling goes about 40% faster than is possible just using the Jumbo Flyer (with a Alden Amos Bumpless drive band to minimize drive band slippage.)  With the stock Ashford drive band, I never got the Jumbo Flyer over ~450 rpm. When plying up gansey yarn at 9 tpi, that is slow!!!!!!!!!

That bobbin of  the AA#0 will hold about 12 grams (0.3 oz. ) of yarn. If one is spinning 40s, that is a neat 560 yards. Amazing how that works out.  With the accelerator, I run it at about the same speed as I did without the accelerator, but I can treadle much slower. This is set up with the flier/bobbin mounted with ball bearings.  A test shows that it will go just as fast using bronze bearings (with more frequent lubrication.)

Why not just go to an e-spinner?  While I do not "count", spinning is very rhythmic, and my cadence sets the beat for everything else.  It took a couple of days to get used to the accelerator, because now my hands have to go twice as fast relative to the cadence.  With an e-spinner, there is no cadence so my hands do not know how fast to move.  

"Made up"

The fact that folks missed the accelerators in Alden Amos (and other sources)  is a good clue into how familiar they are with the literature on old spinning tools.  It  is an example of how well they do their home
work.  My Lazy Kate uses the concept of a tension box, and tension boxes are likely as old as sectional beam looms (e.g., Bronze Age).   In professional textiles, it is an old concept.  It is clearly something the  Cistercians would have known about.

"Made up" is a synonym for  "prepared", or "produced".  When I say, I "made up" 7-ply lace weight, it just means that I spun/plied a bobbin of the stuff   to  demonstrate just how easy to spinning very fine singles can be. (And to test my new Lazy Kate! )   Did the old professional handspinners spin that fine? Yes, handspinners spun tonnes of  "fines" (30,000 ypp - 45,000 ypp) for the weaving industry.   The truth is that any competent spinner can spin Merino or Rambouillet singles so fine that they can produce 10-ply lace weight. By those standards, my 7-ply lace weight was nothing special.  An expert spinner, willing to put some time and effort into it, can spin Merino or Rambouillet singles much finer.

The  Cistercians took vows to only wear white wool.  And, one of their missions was to teach domestic arts, including sheep husbandry, spinning, and weaving.  They produced their own robes. In Chaucer's day, there were 35,000 lay brothers working in  Cistercian controlled wool trade. Since the monks could not wear anything under the wool, they had a very strong incentive to produce produce wool with a low itch factor.  For a while, the  Cistercians were the richest organization in the world, and that wealth was based on wool.   They had the resources and the incentive to produce the softest wool.   They ran an international wool breeding program, bringing fine Spanish rams (Merino) into England.  (When Henry VIII, kicked them out of England, they slaughtered and ate their finest wool sheep. )

There was a time when the spinners were likely the very best mechanical engineers.  Women can do anything necessary to work faster, and produce a better product.  They can understand any process. They can improve any process that can be invented. They designed multiple versions of flyer/bobbin assemblies, and anybody that can do that has a deep knowledge of the physics and math of twist.  They may have expressed it differently than I do, but they understood the physics and could do the math. It was their craft.  Given the fractions in use at the time, we can expect that often the math was done geometrically with dividers and straight edge, rather than as an abstract calculation.  Nevertheless, they understood the physics of the situation, which is more than I can say for Majacraft (http://www.majacraft.co.nz/ )

I use a digital tachometer, but I know other ways to get the same data.  Tracking the number of hanks produced per day in a spinning journal is a much more sensitive measure of spinning speed. (Slower, but much more sensitive.) Women spinning for pence do track how fast they spin, and they work out how to spin faster.

Women with too much leisure time, work out how to do less in more time.  This was the case for ladies in Queen Victoria's Court.  They worked out how to make a tiny bit of spinning fill the day.  Spinners in the 1960s looked back to those Victorian ladies for their knowledge of spinning.  They learned to spin slowly.  If modern spinners had looked back to the professional spinners of 1760, they would have learned how to spin fine and fast.

The myth of the Great Wheel

Great wheels have (or had) several virtues.  They are much faster then either a drop spindle or a supported spindle. Great wheels are easier to make than a flyer/bobbin assembly (but today are similarly priced).  And they can insert a lot of twist without any take up, which facilitates some drafting techniques.

I certainly bought into the myth of the great great wheel. Everyone that I trusted said how wonderful they were, it was just that they were big and expensive.  And they are a bit rare and exotic - that gives big wheel spinners a certain cache. For a long, long time, I wanted one.  I thought it was certainly the fastest and best way to spin woolen.  The only reason I did not get one was that I was focused on worsted for my gansey knitting.

As I planned spinning weft for the next weaving project, I thought sure I was going to have to get a great wheel.  Then as I spun the warp, I realized that I was spinning on a flier/bobbin  much faster than I had seen anyone ever spin on a great wheel..  I stopped, and did the math, coldly and rationally.

Great wheel's vices are that they are best with long-draw woolen drafting, and they cannot wind on at full speed.  Yes they go fast, but they also go slow. Their cyclical behavior is also a problem in handling fine yarns.

My conclusion was that the mythology arose as great wheels designed for production spinning were compared to flyer/bobbin wheels designed for leisure spinning.  In this comparison, the great wheel is always faster.  However, my flier/bobbin wheel designed for production is also always faster than a  flyer/bobbin wheels designed for leisure spinning. Thus, the real question is is a great wheel designed for production spinning faster than a flyer/bobbin wheel designed for production spinning?  The answer depends on the grist of the yarn being spun.  At low grist, the wheels are equal. At high grist, the flyer/bobbin wheel designed for production is significantly faster.

By the by,  the Canadian Production Wheel (CPW) was designed after the professional hand spinners had died out, and those skills were lost.  It was designed for amateur spinners, spinning low grist yarns.  Canadian Production Wheels were  not sold to professional spinners with the elan that separates the talented professional from the merely competent amateur.  The CPW did not have to be very fast because it not designed to spin industrial quantities of lace and weaving singles. After friction losses  and belt slip, CPW are hard pressed to insert twist faster than ~1,200 rpm.    That is much  more than required for 1,600 ypp singles for knitting yarn, and hence the myth of the CPW was born.

In truth, the ratio on a CPW was about the same as the ratio on the AA fliers as delivered.  So, in the context of modern spinning, a CPW was/is actually fairly fast.  However, as soon as you start spinning higher grist yarns the performance starts to lag.  I thought about buying the very fine CPW that Will Taylor had, but it was not fast enough, and I could not seen any easy way to make it faster.  On the other hand the the path to more speed with the AA fliers was clear - just a bit of wood turning.  As soon as I got the AA fliers, I made/installed new whorls with a higher ratio.  That was 2.5 years ago, and I am still making sacrifices to the Gods of Speed, so that I can spin faster. Current ratio is about 44:1,  which is more than twice that of a CPW (~20:1).  However, my actual flier speed after drivebelt slippage is about 3,600 rpm or 3 times the speed of Will Taylor's fine CPW at the same treadle cadence.  I run my wheel that fast for warp, but for woolen, I slow down to ~2,400 rpm because I think it produces a better yarn.  However, that is still twice as fast as a CPW.

My math says that a great wheel (spinning woolen)  is a bit faster than a CPW or, my AA fliers as delivered. That means a great wheel can be faster than the vast majority of modern spinning wheels. It also means that my wheel spinning 10,000 ypp woolen is 30%  faster than a great wheel.  That 30%, is enough time to weave the spun yarn. And, my worsted is spun much faster.  I no longer desire a great wheel.

These days, I spin (woolen) sitting in a wooden arm chair with my forearms resting on the chair arms, ~24 inches apart, with my right hand some 6 to 10" from the orifice.  (For worsted, my hands are about one staple length apart.) The support gives me the stability that I need to control the fine stream of fiber marching past. DRS controls take up and twist insertion.  This allows spinning very soft and very fine yarns.  I have never seen anyone else spin like this, but it is very fast.  If there is a problem, I have a few seconds to fix it before it disappears into the maw of the beast.  Arm movement are small  There is simply no way I can get that speed and control from a great wheel.  I am very happy with my woolen spinning, and no longer want a great wheel.

CNCH is coming up. I am going, and am taking my wheel..

http://www.cnch.org/conferences/cnch2014/

Accelerators and the Miner's head

If we look, we see a significant number of old flyer/bobbin spinning wheels with accelerators.  When there were large numbers of professional spinners and hand spinning was a competitive industry, they knew about accelerators to allow them to spin faster.  They did not put them on great wheels.

With some care, one can design a flyer/bobbin spinning wheel to run at 3,000 to 4,000 rpm in either single drive bobbin lead or single drive flyer lead.  What is hard, is fabricating a DD/DRS  flyer/bobbin spinning wheel to run at  3,000 to 4,000 rpm.

Designing and building an accelerator for a spinning wheel is a large effort, so there must have been a serious reason for putting accelerator wheels on flyer/bobbin spinning wheel..  The only serious purpose seems to have been a fast DD/DRS system to produce fine, consistent,  smooth warp at grists less than the spun count at high speed.

The Traddy Hot Rod now has a 1:2 accelerator wheel, and the AA Competition flier has no problem running at 4,500 rpm; Scotch Tension, Irish Tension, or DD/DRS.  It does not do DD w/ slippage.  First make it work, then make it pretty.  It needs to be a little prettier for its pix.

And, as I have already disclosed, spinning at speeds over 3,000 rpm produces superior quality warp.  DD/DRS provides consistency.  DD/DRS with an accelerator provides consistency at high speed. (For that speed and consistency, DRS demands great effort..  The whorls must have the precisely correct DRS for the intended grist. Draft too thick and you break off;  draft too thin, and you break off; draft too slow, and you break off. )  When you must spin a great deal of fine worsted, it is the tool of choice. If you much spin a lot of worsted, it is worth the effort.

Thus, in the last 3 months, I have moved from thinking that warp could be spun at 400 yards per hour to knowing that warp can be spun much faster and the process of spinning faster, produces much better warp. The same line of inquiry convinces me that trying to spin woolen too fast, reduces the quality of the yarn.

There is no reason why a high quality, very small flyer/bobbin assembly cannot be run at a sustained pace of 3,500 to 4,000 rpm. (with an accelerator wheel.)  This will allow the spinning of a hank of  fine (10s) worsted warp per hour (e.g., 48 minutes). Shirting and hosiery singles (40s) require twice the twist, so you will only get about 320 yards per hour.

The issue of yarn blowing out of the heck array, is not so much aerodynamic as centripetal force.  Clever placement of a extra heck or two resolves the issue.

Great wheels were the Medieval technology of choice. The Renascence tool was the flyer, and the flyer was faster and more compact. Certainly great wheels were cheaper and deeply bedding in myth and romance, but as a tool for a professional spinner was the tool of choice. No great wheel can keep up with a flyer/bobbin wheel properly designed for the grist; not spinning worsted or woolen. Moreover, a flyer allow spinning finer and more consistent yarns. True a spindle (driven or supported will spin very soft yarns that cannot be spun with single drive flyer system because take up will pull the the yarn apart. Spinning such soft yarns with DD/slippage systems is theoretically feasible, but not practical. However, very soft yarns can be spin with DD/DRS systems. It is a matter of doing math, and making up the right bobbins and flyer whorls. With the right tools in hand, spinning such yarns is quick and easy.

Expertise in the flyer has been lost. A flyer will do a lot more than most spinners are aware.

The Bartlett Mule

I am not the first to notice that woolen likes to be spun slowly.

Note there are many modern industrial techniques using fluids or belts for spinning fluffy yarns.  Some of these produce very fluffy yarns, very fast.  However, when spinning woolen with a flyer or driven spindle, it is better not to go too fast.

And, these days, Clems and Clems makes the best tools for woolen woolen fiber preparation.  I make my own combs, but I used Clems and Clems carding tools for wool and cotton.