Cotton Cards

I like my drum carder - it is a Clemes and Clemes. I think hand cranked carders can be gentler on fine fibers than the motorized.

However, for very fine fibers spun woolen, hand cards are better.  I was told that my wool cards were well suited for carding fine wool. Well sort of!

I was told that my cotton cards were only suited for cotton, and not to use them on wool. No!  Use your wool cards on almost all wools, but when you have a very fine fleece, all sorted, graded, and perfectly scoured, use your cotton cards.  

Spinzilla

All of this talk about fine spinning has put me in the mood to do some spinning. My wife is off to a school reunion, so I am off to Spinzilla. (Her car will be out of the garage, so I can arrange my spinning gear in the air conditioned garage.)

My goal is to spin a pound of  Heinz 57 wool into 22,400 yards (40 hanks) of worsted single at 20 tpi in 7 days.

eta 9/9/18
The Heinz will have to be prepped; washed, oiled, combed, dized into bird's nests. . . . . the start is washing and oiling - here I begin the study a bit early, because I may be required to make a new flyer whorl to get the correct grist. I have whorls spin it at its spin count (30,800 ypp) or to spin knitting yarn at 22,400 ypp but this is somewhere in between.

Some Heinz 57  having been carded, washed, oiled, draining and drying. A day in the sun and it will be ready for combing etc.

Edited 9/10/18 to add:

Combed Heinz fiber as bird nests drying in the sun because the Aden Amos carding/spinning oil has water in it, a I added some more as I was combing. Each bird nest weighs about 4 grams, so 3 are required to spin a hank. The roving is very soft and has a tensile strength  ~4 grams.  About 15% or 20% of the fiber in the commercial fiber  product as received is left in the combs and is set aside to be carded and spun woolen. I could get a higher yield of the fiber for worsted spinning, but I need fiber for woolen spinning anyway.  Note that at this point, the Heinz is much whiter than as received. 

9/12/18 ETA 

My lawyer says it is a team "sport" where the goal is to spin a lot. It does not matter what I spin, as  I support my team by spinning a lot of yards.  My wheel spins fastest when spinning  woolen and semi-worsted yarns  at ~5,000 ypp. I guess I owe it to my team members so spin woolen  and semi-worsted at 5,000 ypp.

THREE

All the wheel makers indicate the "ratio" of  their wheels in various configurations. However, because of drive belt slip, it is not a very useful indicator of anything. In fact, I did not really begin to understand my wheel until I got my digital tachometer that told me how fast my flyers and bobbins were really spinning.

Higher ratios should indicate that more twist is being inserted to into the yarn.  IN THEORY, for any wheel, the diameter of the drive wheel is fixed,  so smaller whorls should mean more twist is being inserted?!?!?! NO! Smaller whorls mean there is more slippage. When you get down to the tiny whorls of "lace flyers", a lot more slippage!  My tachometer told me that my fancy lace kit did not spin any faster or insert any more twist than my standard bobbin, and the double drive kit inserted more twist than the lace flier, but when I tried  to speed up the double drive, by making smaller whorls, speed actually went DOWN, DOWN, DOWN. Deep thought indicated that there are good physical reasons for this related to vibration waves in the drive belt so smaller whorls have much less contact with the drive belt and much more slippage. This is an effect that dominates lace flyers in modern spinning wheel making.

You get a big wheel with fancy lace flyers, and lace production is -- disappointing.  First, they are Scotch Tension,  -- the drag of the tension system must be overcome before you can spin anything.  And, that fine lace yarn that you want to spin must absorb enough twist to become strong enough to overcome the drag of the Scotch Tension, and that is a huge hurdle. I often spin yarns that are so fine  (grist greater than 30,000 ypp) that they need more than 15 tpi to have any strength. Certainly some twist can be stored in the leader, and that can be transferred to the proto-yarn before the proto-yarn must overcome the drag of the tension system, so the proto-yarn can maintain yarn lock and receive twist from the spinning bobbin. I took my tachometer around, and most modern wheels with Scotch Tension insert twist at much less than 1,000  rpm.  I can do much better with a drop spindle, and I am not even very good with a drop spindle.

Modern DD wheels are a bit better in terms of  delivering twist to the proto-yarn, but are desperately tricky to adjust the drive belt tension so the bobbin spins faster than the flyer, but drag on the whorls does not slow the whole system to a crawl.  However, a lot of things can go wrong in a DD system that will slow the system way down: too much drive belt tension, too little drive belt tension, wear on the drive belts, wear on the whorls, lack of drive belt dressing, drive belt dressing accumulating on the  whorls, are all things to monitor every few hours of spinning.   DD systems have rightfully earned a reputation of being high maintenance.  Which is not to say that I did not LOVE my DD, when I got it.

The obvious solution is to design a clockwork system so the bobbin spins fast to insert twist, and the flyer spins slower to wind the yarn onto the bobbin, and to wind yarn onto the bobbin no faster than twist is inserted. Such a system was invented in Florence, Italy  in the 13th century for use in the silk production industry. It was the  size of a room, and required a man and a boy  to operate.  A century later it had been reduced in size so one person would use it for spinning worsted, and it remained one of the most valuable trade secrets in the world.

In essence, a DRS wheel is a double drive spinning wheel set up as a clockwork mechanism with the bobbin whorl just enough smaller than the flyer whorl, that the bobbin spins fast enough to insert twist as the flyer winds yarn on to the  bobbin at the proper rate so each segment of the yarn has the correct twist. This concept has THREE important advantages. 1) It relieves the spinner from having to control twist, so all spinner needs to do is draft to the correct grist. 2) It reduces drag and slippage in the spinning system, so much less labor is required to insert twist. 3) It can be true bobbin lead, so the bobbin can spin faster than the flyer, and some of the problems of a flyer spinning at high speed are reduced. The net results are that  one can easily spin 560 yards of  5,600 ypp (75 wpi) single with 9 tpi in an hour,  and spinning/plying a 500 yard entry for the longest thread contest is an easy day's work. (E.g., one can easily spin 45,000 ypp singles at 150 yards per hour.)

The downsides with DRS are:

•  you need to know what yarn you want to spin
• you need the correct whorls for the yarn you want to spin
• you need to be able to draft to a consistent grist
• you need to keep drafting as long as the drive wheel is moving or the yarn will break off

I have 5 whorls containing about a dozen "grooves" that I store on the wheel, and which allow me to spin almost any yarn I might want to spin, and I have more whorls in the spin chest. It takes me about 3 minutes to swap whorls.  I can spin the singles for all of the knitting yarns that I commonly spin with just 2 whorls containing 6 grooves.

TWO

Alden made me 2 DD flyers - a #1 and a #0, his "Competition" flyer.  The #1 Flyer has a capacity  of about 3 ounces of yarn and the Competition has a  capacity of  ~ 2 ounces.  The Competition, just looks elegant and fast, and like something that would be just right for frog hair yarns. When I first used it, before making DRS whorls for it, it certainly was better for fine singles. On the other hand, running DD (not DRS), spinning fine was difficult.

When I started making DRS whorls for those flyer/bobbin assemblies, the whorls for  the  #1 flyer were for 5,600 ypp (75 wpi) singles , then 11,000 ypp (105 wpi) singles then 22,000 ypp (150 wpi).  They worked and I spent months learning to use them. Then, I made DRS whorls for the #0, and yes it was wonderful for spinning fine. For a long time, If I wanted to spin 5,600 ypp I used the #1, and if I wanted to spin 30,000 ypp, I would use the #0. Later, I went back and made whorls for spinning fine with the #1.

AA never did much spinning of yarns with grists greater than 24,000 ypp. On pg 215 of the BBB (big blue book), he writes of spinning 58 count Targhee at 19,000 ypp, on a single drive, bobbin lead flyer/bobbin assembly the size of the  #1 flyer he made for me. I have spun dozens of  hanks of such yarn with that configuration.  I had to answer the question, "Do I need DRS for fine spinning on the #1?"  However, by switching whorls and using DRS I could take that same fiber and spin it at 30,000 ypp, and spin twice as many yards per hour.  Or, with DRS I could spin it at 20,000 ypp twice as fast as I could using single bobbin lead, single drive. That is the power of DRS.

When spinning 5,600 ypp singles, I would spin about a 1/3 oz of yarn, which would increase the effective diameter of the bobbin, then I would change flyer whorls, and  spin another 1/2 oz of yarn, which would increase effective diameter of the bobbin, then I would change flyer whorls again, and spin the final 5/6 oz of yarn to make just over 560 yd or a hank of yarn. I estimated weight based on guidelines that I marked on the ends of the bobbins. Much later, I moved to making flyer whorls with 3 grooves on them so I did not have to change whorls, but only slip the drive band from groove to groove. This was wonderful, so I made such flyer whorls for 20s, 40s , 60s, and 80s( ~200 wpi). In those days, I was spinning knitting yarns, so the whorl for 10s inserted 9 tpi for 3 different effective bobbin diameters, and the 80s whorl inserted 26 tpi,  and had only 1 groove because 560 yards is less than 7 grams and does not change the effective bobbin diameter significantly.

At that point, the big flyer was better than the Competition flyer for spinning fine singles. Alden used bronze bearings in his bobbins, and I had upgraded the bobbins for the big flyer to ball bearings.  Fine yarns want a lot of twist, so the bobbins for  spinning fine yarn, need to be able to spin very fast.  Ball bearings make this possible. In addition, the larger flyer has a thicker axle and is more stable when the bobbin is spinning at very high speed.

When spinning 80s, I sometimes spin the bobbin at over 4,000 rpm, while the flyer is rotating at about 155 rpm less. 

When the finished  yarn is less than 3 oz, I use the #1 flyer with the proper whorls to give the proper ply-twist.  For gansey yarn, I spin the singles hank by hank (1.6 oz each), wind off on to bobbins, steam block, and ply the 8 oz hank of 5-ply yarn on a standard Ashford Jumbo flyer using a weight and some fishing line for Scotch tension.

ONE

I spin at a reasonable speed. I did not learn to spin until I was old, my eyes dim, and my fingers stiff. My advantages were curiosity and a desire for better yarn so I could make better fabrics. This desire pushed me to use the lessons of history to make better spinning gear.

The engineering precepts are in Big Book of  Handspinning by Alden Amos. What is not in that big blue book are the skills to use equipment made to those precepts. The skills are somewhat different from those required by conventional Double Drive and Scotch Tension wheels. So any wheel maker that makes such wheels should set up a training organization.

Alden's big blue book is symbolic of how much of the hand spinning tradition has been lost.
The other day I went back to http://www.twosheep.com/blog/?p=608 . That blog post is from the days I was learning to spin on stock Ashford equipment. My Traddy was still STSD.  I thought that was a fast wheel. However, upgrading to DTDD made it faster. Then, I bought a wood lath and began re-turning the whorls to make the flyer/bobbin assembly go faster.  Then, I had Alden make me new flyers. He did not make them to DRS specifications, he made them standard DD. However, those small, balanced, stable flyers were the first BIG step toward more speed. Then, I started making my own spinning bobbins. That was the second big step towards more speed. The new bobbins had whorls very slightly smaller than the flyer whorls, but that tiny change made a huge difference.  All of a sudden, I could spin much faster. (It was not "all of a sudden", I had to workout, and learn a block of skills! There were thousands of "breakoffs" in the learning process.)

In those days the goal was good, hand spun, 5-ply gansey yarn at 1,000 ypp. Thus, I focused on singles of 5,600 yards per pound (75 wpi). For knitting yarns, I spin them at ~9 tpi.  I learned to spin them fast enough that I could make useful quantities of  5-ply knitting yarn for knitting fisherman's sweaters.  For a while I was diverted  and waylaid by  https://sweetgeorgiayarns.com/2013/09/spinning-fastest/  .
However, that was not a path  of truth.

I thought about entering the Longest Thread contest. (https://bothwellspinin.com.au/the-longest-thread-competition) So I turned bobbins designed to work with the Alden's #0 flyer to insert 26 tpi, and put some thought into fiber and fiber prep. I bought a bunch of nice Rambouillet from Anna Harvey, and spent the summer learning to spin fine, and measuring what I was doing, so I could do better. I had an entry of 10 grams of fiber in ~ 500 yards of 2-ply yarn. I was working on packaging it, when I had to leave for Europe.  The package never got sent.

Under the streets of Bruges in a 500 year old textiles vault, I learned that there was no real purpose in spinning wool finer than its spin count. The useful goal was to spin wool competently at its spin count. I gave up on the Longest Thread competitions, and put some effort in to just spinning Rambouillet well, at its spin count. As a result, I can sit down at my wheel, and spin Rambouillet at 45,000 ypp (200 wpi), at 150 yards per hour.  That means today I can spin 1,000 yards of single and ply it into 500 yards of 2-ply  (20,000 ypp) in an easy day. Or, I can ply it into 270 yards of 13,000 ypp, very round, strong, and durable lace yarn in a day. This is nothing exceptional, this is a good day's work with good tools and good skills developed over 10 years (allowing time for my Lyme Disease.)

However, I still liked "gansey" yarn so I went back to spinning it. I learned to spin it at a hank (560 yards) per hour.  At that rate, I built up an inventory of those  10s (for 10 hanks per pound), so I bought a loom. The 9 tpi 10s are not firm enough for weaving warp, so I started spinning 10s at 12 tpi.  That is a third more twist, so it should slow everything down by 1/3.  However, part of the speed limit for spinning 9 tpi  singles is drafting.  To insert more twist, I can treadle faster, so  I find that I spin 12 tpi singles at about 500 yards per hour.  They are ~ 75 wpi when packed to refusal per the Alden Amos protocol, and they are STRONG enough to be weaving warp. For some weaving, singles can be spun harder and stronger.

 Singles at 20 hanks per pound (11,200 ypp, ~105 wpi )  need about 14 tpi for ordinary yarns or about 17 tpi for hosiery. (And, hosiery yarns are spun worsted.) Twist holds yarn together, and as 5-ply at ~2,000 ypp (44 wpi) this has enough twist to hold the sock together long enough to be worth the time to knit. Knit on fine needles, the fabric has the texture of very fine commercial men's socks --  the kind of hose that in the past one could buy at Needless Markup Department Stores, but which are no longer available. You will need a couple of ounces of yarn for a pair of socks, so it can be spun and plied in an easy day.

A tension box used for rapidly plying 5-ply yarn from singles on 4" bobbins.  

A DRS wheel makes spinning a 100 grams of fine, durable sock yarn a trivial task.  Spinning enough singles to warp a bolt of cloth (4.5 lb or 50,000 yards) is more effort, but doable with a fast DRS wheel.

There are wheel makers out there that can make such wheels - if they would just clear out the back of their shop and turn it into a classroom where clients could learn the skills of spinning. Heck, they might even run a University on carding in the same space. 

How fast did professional hand spinners spin?

 See http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/longest-thread-of-hand-spun-wool-in-one-hour/

My normal single is 5,600 ypp  (75 wpi  @ pack to refusal) semi-woolen. At 9 tpi, I use that grist of single for making 2-ply jumper yarn (2,500 ypp), 5-ply “gansey” yarn (1,000 ypp),  or 10-ply Aran yarn (500 ypp),  and at 12 tpi, I use it for weaving warp.  With my Ashford Traditional equipped with an Alden Amos flyer/bobbin assembly, somewhat modified by myself for DRS spinning as described in Alden’s Big Book of Handspinning pgs 390 et seq. 

I spin the knitting singles at more than a hank (560 yards) per hour (wound onto bobbins). I spin the weaving singles at about 450 yards per hour (wound onto bobbins). 

Thus, the actual spinning time is about 45 or 48 minutes.  2,400 ypp singles take less twist, but are thicker and have to be wound off more often, so I can spin them at ~400 yards per hour.  Finer singles require more twist, and thus are produced more slowly, until well prepped fiber for 70 or 80 count singles (e.g., 42,000 ypp, 200 wpi) require about 26 tpi and can be spun at about 150 yards per hour even though I can spin for days without winding off.  For this, I need an accelerator on the spinning wheel. 

(see AA’s big blue book, pg 185) I run the spinning bobbin at 3,000 to 4,000 rpm (by actual tachometer measure) and the flyer slow enough to allow the appropriate amount of twist to accumulate. The flyer rpm is between 330 and 150 rpm.  The DRS clock work controls the relative speeds of the bobbin and the flyer.  Mostly, this allows the bobbin to spin much faster, and thereby insert twist much faster, while the flyer to spins slower causing less drag, and reducing total effort.

Right now there is ~32,000 yards of 12 tpi singles on 320 bobbins on the warping rack beside the loom.  Upstairs there are bins and bins full of hand spun and hand plied gansey yarn and Aran yarn for knitting, containing about another 60,000 yards of singles. I know how many yards of  this single I can spin in an hour. 

And, I cannot spin that fast with any commercial e-spinner, no way, no how.

Traditional professional hand spinners with training and professional grade tools spun faster. 

The easy check on grist, is to look at the thread with a linen tester and see that there are 20 staples in the cross section of the thread. Or cut a ¼” inch piece of the thread, and drop it in a few drops of water in a saucer, and verify that there are 20 little pieces of wool fiber in the water.