Wool

How wool is made - material, manufacture, making, history, used, processing, parts, components, structure, steps, industry, machine, Raw Materials, Design. Background As with many discoveries of early man, anthropologists believe the use of wool came out of the challenge to survive.

In seeking means of protection and warmth, humans in the Neolithic Age wore animal pelts as clothing. Finding the pelts not only warm and comfortable but also durable, they soon began to develop the basic processes and primitive tools for making wool. By 4000 B.C. , Babylonians were wearing clothing of crudely woven fabric.

People soon began to develop and maintain herds of wool-bearing animals. The ambitious British soon realized the advantages of both producing and processing their own wool. Today, wool is a global industry, with Australia, Argentina, the United States, and New Zealand serving as the major suppliers of raw wool. What for centuries was a small home-based craft has grown into a major industry. Raw Materials While most people picture only sheep when they think of wool, other animals also produce fine protein fiber. The cuticle is the outer layer.

Www.sheepcentre.co.uk/wool.htm. `Sheep have eaten up our meadows and our downs, Our corn, our wood, whole villages and towns.' ...wrote a poet at the time.

Despite setbacks, raw wool exporting expanded, and so also did manufacturing of wool fabrics. This was becoming both specialized and localized. The West Country had three advantages-extensive sheep pastures, a supply of soft water for washing, scouring and dyeing, and water-power to drive milling machinery. Similarly, the Pennine districts of Yorkshire and Lancashire had soft water, and water power from steeply graded streams. In East Anglia there was soft water but no hills or fast-running streams to provide power for `fulling' mills. Cloth from English looms quickly achieved an international reputation. The production process. Wool. Wool just before processing Long and short hair wool at the South Central Family Farm Research Center in Booneville, Arkansas Wool section, Walcha show.

The creamy fleeces on the left are crossbred wool. Wool is the textile fiber obtained from sheep and certain other animals, including cashmere from goats, mohair from goats, qiviut from muskoxen, angora from rabbits, and other types of wool from camelids.[1] Characteristics[edit] Felting of wool occurs upon hammering or other mechanical agitation as the microscopic barbs on the surface of wool fibers hook together. Wool fibers are hydrophilic, meaning they readily absorb moisture, but are not hollow. Wool ignites at a higher temperature than cotton and some synthetic fibers. Wool is considered by the medical profession to be hypoallergenic.[6][dubious ] Processing[edit] Shearing[edit] Scouring[edit] In commercial wool, vegetable matter is often removed by chemical carbonization.

Quality[edit] History[edit] Wild sheep were more hairy than woolly. History of Wool for Kids! Modern sheep The most interesting thing about wool is that sheep didn't always have wool, or not enough to notice.

When people first started hunting sheep, they hunted them for their meat. Sheep hair was more like deer hair is today, short and thick, not long and fine and curly. Like goat hair. Then around 10,000 BC people in West Asia began to domesticate sheep (tame them) and take care of them, so there would always be plenty of meat around.

Man shearing a sheep, about 1550 AD (Brueghel) Sometime not too much later people also began to make clothes, instead of just wearing furs. Wool Processing. Wool Processing Basics. Wool processing is a multi step procedure to turn raw wool into finished product.

The basic steps Scouring DryingCarding or CombingSpinningFelting Dyeing Scouring Scouring, the technical term for washing, is the first step in the process. This involves washing the wool in hot soapy water to remove dirt, grease and dry plant matter from the fleece. The preferred water temperature for washing wool is 140 degrees Fahrenheit. Soaps of various natures have been tried with much success. The key is to keep the water temperature and the volume of soap used as low as possible while still being able to wash out the grease and dirt.

In the scouring process the wool undergoes several soaks and rinses until the wash water remains clean. Each subsequent wash is a weaker solution of soap or alkaline until the final wash is only water. At each wash step the wash water can be retained for subsequent batches of wool until the first wash becomes to dirty for further use. Drying Carding or Combing Spinning Felting. Steps in Processing Wool. How to shear a sheep. Wool Processing in a Fiber Mill Part 2 of 3. Wool Processing in a Fiber Mill Part 3 of 3. Wool Processing in a Fiber Mill Part 1 of 3.