Worsted yarn

“ To-day there are three distinct methods of producing worsted yarn. Firstly, there is the preparing and spinning of the true worsted thread, this being made from long English and colonial wool. In this class should also be included mohair and alpaca. Secondly, there is the preparing and spinning of what are known as cross-bred and botany yarns, these being made from cross-bred and botany wools. Thirdly, there is the preparing and spinning of short botany wools on the French system. ”

“ Practically all worsted yarns, and some woollen yarns, however, are supplied to carpet manufacturers by the spinners in oil or in grease; that is to say, still impregnated with the oil which has been put into them in the process of spinning. The freeing of the yarn from this oil by washing is a necessary preliminary to dyeing, inasmuch as the presence of oil would prevent the dye liquor permeating the wool fibres.
Scouring is effected by soap and hot water, generally by machines of one type or another. The yarn in skeins is sometimes thrown upon swifts, which revolve over a vat of suds. ”

“ Worsted Lastings.—A smooth, warp-faced, sateen-weave fabric woven from worsted warp and weft, having a plain-weave effect on the back of the fabric. Generally piece-dyed black. Worsted Lastings average 30 to 31 inches in width and 29 to 30 yards in length per piece. Met with in three grades of quality. Average Bradford price for the best grade was, for the 10 years ended 1914, about 31s. 5d. per piece.
Worsted Yarn is a straight yarn, i.e., a yarn produced from straight fibres ”

“ Cotton, wool and union (cotton warp and worsted weft) fabrics are frequently singed (see Bleaching) before dyeing. Worsted yarn, especially two-fold yarn, is very liable to curl and become entangled when scoured, and in order to avoid this it is necessary to stretch and "set" it. To this end it is stretched tight on a specially constructed frame, placed in boiling water, and then cooled. ”

“ It follows, therefore, that for giving good work and keeping the threads at a regular tension, every thread in the doups should have its own independent slackener. It is not absolutely necessary that this should be so; strong twist cotton or worsted yarn will work very well in a harness with one slackening bar vibrating for each shot, though it must throw an irregular strain on the yarn, and it requires to be tightly paced. ”

“ According to the French system, which is employed in this country only for very soft fine yarns, no twist is given to the sliver until the actual spinning begins; and the spinning is then usually done on mules, which in this country are rarely used in the manufacture of worsted yarn. We shall discuss these machines when we come to woolens. According to the most common procedure in this country, the roving box not only draws, but imparts a certain amount of twist to the yarn. This is done by winding the yarn from horizontal spools on to vertical spindles. ”

“ By this process of continued doubling and drawing, it becomes an easy matter to spin worsted yarns of extreme fineness, running in their counts all the way up to 80s, 90s, and even higher, the French particularly excelling in the manufacture of very fine counts, to which their system of worsted mule-spinning seems to be especially adapted. The finer yarns spun in America will usually average about 40s, which involves a length of more than 20,000 yards to a pound of yarn. ”

“ There is just one drawback to the fulfilment of this noble ambition that every woman in America shall devote every spare moment to the knitting of warm sweaters, stockings, and other comforts for the boys in khaki, and that is—the tremendously high price of worsted yarns. We can all squeeze out a little more time but we can none of us spend more money than we have, and in these times the calls for cash donations are urgent and not infrequent. But now you can have all the yarn that you will use without spending any money. ”

“ To produce yarn of the woolen type a set of machinery entirely different from that used in worsted manufacture is necessary. The wool is carded, but no attempt is made to get the fibers parallel. The reduction in thickness of the sliver is not brought about upon the so-called drawing frame, but by a mule frame where the drawing and twisting are done at the same operation. As neither combs nor gills are employed, there is not the same smooth, level yarn, but one which possesses a fringe-like covering or fuzzy appearance that makes the woolen yarn so valuable. ”

“ There is a fourth class of worsted yarns, principally carpet and knitting yarns, which are treated in a much readier manner than any of the foregoing, but as the treatment is analogous—with the elimination of certain processes—to the second of the foregoing, it is not necessary to refer specially to it. ”

“ The different sizes of yarn are extensively used in a large variety of fabrics, sometimes alone, sometimes in conjunction with other fibres, e.g. with worsted in the various kinds of carpets, with cotton in tapestries and household cloths, with line and tow yarns for the same fabrics and for paddings, &c., and with wool for horse clothing. The yarns are capable of being dyed brilliant colours, but, unfortunately, the colours are not very fast to light. The fibre can also be prepared to imitate human hair with remarkable closeness, and advantage of this is largely taken in making stage wigs. ”

“ The slackening bar must not rise so high as to raise the yarn that is above it, nor must it sink so low as to press the whip down on the back harness board, and it must be so regulated that within these limits it will give the proper amount of slackening, and prevent the whip warp from getting tight and drawing up the small back harness.
Fig. 138
Worsted makes the best weaving doups for strong work, but for lighter work cotton is mostly used, being finer and cheaper. Sometimes [212] polished linen yarn is used and makes a very smooth doup, but does not give the wear. ”

“ As compared with the method of producing worsted yarns in the weaving trade, this system of dry spinning is so called because no oil is added to the sliver in preparation; the system of combing adopted deals with shorter and less valuable wools and moderately priced yarns are feasible. Openness of character is best secured by imparting twist on the ordinary woollen mule, where the thread is torsioned intermittently in long lengths, during which operation a certain proportion of the fibres are thrown to the surface, as clearly shown in Fig. ”

“ With hard yarns which are thick for the gauge of the frame, these straightened loops may occur six or eight together and have the effect of tightening the fabric at that point, at other times they take up a direction leaning to the right or the left which greatly impoverishes the goods. The more usual type of mal-formation is given in loops 3 and 4 where the stitch, unable to content itself with the length of yarn allotted to it, takes up an enlarged area. These are termed "pinholes," and when scattered all over a fabric seriously undermine its value. ”

“ The warp is simply a stout cotton twine or coarse thread bought in balls or hanks; while various cheap mill-yarns or what is known as worsteds or coarse crewels are used as filling. These, of course, are cheap, but alas! are dyed with fleeting or garish aniline dyes. No new blue yarn can equal either in color or durability the old indigo-dyed, homespun, hard-twisted yarn made on a spinning-wheel. Germantown, early in the field in American wool manufacture, still supplies nearly all the yarn for his hand-looms. ”

“ The single line he calls yarn, two or more single lines, laid parallel and twisted together, he calls thread; and of this there are many varieties, such as bobbin-net-lace-thread, stocking-thread, sewing-thread, &c.
Gassing.
In fine spinning, the yarn, when doubled, is for some purposes singed or gassed, in order to get rid of the loose fibres, and to make it more level and compact. The process of singeing yarn strikes a stranger as being more remarkable than anything else in the mill. ”

“ The selection of suitable yarn is obviously important. Warp yarn is generally stronger than weft, and the hardness is obtained by extra twisting of the thread: owing to this peculiarity, warp yarn is generally called “twist.” For heavy sizing purposes, a soft spun twist is advisable, and one made out of the harder and wiry stapled cottons. ”

“ It is not dirty compared to shoe-making, and whereas one stands to "spool," when one is not waiting for yarn it is constant movement up and down the line. The fact that there are more children than young girls, more young girls than women, proves the simplicity of this task. The cotton comes from the spinning-room to the spool-room, and as the girl stands before her "side," as it is called, she sees on a raised ledge, whirling in rapid vibration, some one hundred huge spools full of yarn; whilst below her, each in its little case, lies a second bobbin of yarn wound like a distaff. ”

“ It is a very usual practice in preparing yarns for weaving purposes to “condition” them—that is, to allow them to absorb a certain amount of moisture. This is often done while they are wound on the spool or bobbin, and the result is that the latter speedily lose their form and become out of balance. By coating them as described this evil is avoided, and yarn can be conditioned with impunity while on the bobbins.
(415) In order to ascertain the counts of yarn, a machine known as a “wrap reel” is employed. ”

“ The slackening bar must be arranged to work in time with the doup standards, and should not slacken the yarn too much nor too little, just keeping it at a uniform tension. The great point with tender or weak yarn is to reduce all friction to a minimum, no matter by what it is caused, and if this is done the yarn and doups, if they are of a fair quality to begin with, should both work well ”

“ Folded Yarns are hairy after being spun and folded, and in addition sometimes contain nibs and rough places. The fibre and nibs have to be cleaned off by means of a gassing machine so constructed that the end of silk (silk yarn) is frictioned to throw off the nibs, and at the same time is run very rapidly through a gas flame a sufficient number of times to burn off the hairy and fibrous matter without injuring the main thread. The yarn is now ready for reeling into skeins or for warping, both of which operations are common to all the textile yarns. ”

“ These goods are made usually in two coloured warp patterns, dark blue and white and red and white. One feature which is worthy of mention in regard to Ticking and other similar lines is that they are to-day being stock-dyed in increasing quantities. This method consists of dyeing the cotton or bleaching it, as the case may be, in the raw state and then carding, drawing, and spinning just as if a grey fabric were to be made. Stock-dyeing results in the dye affecting the fibres which form the very centre of a yarn, and for this reason is a better process than dyeing the finished yarn. ”

“ The spinning frame may have a hundred spindles or more, each one of which is drawing out its supply of "roving" to the required size of yarn and giving it the twist necessary to bind the fibers together. The yarn to be used for the warp is given a harder twist so that it may be strong enough to stand the strain in weaving. The yarn for filling is usually left soft. ”

“ In many cases, also, yarn is specially required to be spun upon the bare spindle as on a mule, as for instance when used as weft and put into the shuttle of a loom. It is probably the very greatest defect of the ring frame that it can only, with great difficulty, be made to form a good cop of yarn on the bare spindle, although thousands of pounds have been spent on experimenting in that direction. How soon it may be accomplished with commercial success cannot be known, as a great number of individuals are constantly working in that direction. ”

“ They have no machinery for spinning; the yarn is merely twisted by hand, and is so coarse and loose that it would not hold together a week if made into a garment and worn in the woods. Of course, a fair article of yarn, and even cloth, may be, and has been, made entirely by hand, but these people have neither the skill, the taste, nor the industry to enable them to do such work. A coarse hair grows with the wool on the goat, and the squaws do not even take the trouble to separate it, but work both up together, making a very uncouth-looking fabric, even if thick, warm, and serviceable. ”

“ Many parcels of rags are of one single color, but for the most part they are made of various colored wools; therefore, if on examination of a fabric with a magnifying glass a yarn of any particular color is found to contain a number of individual fibers of glaring colors, the presence of shoddy can be assumed with certainty.
Woolen goods containing cotton are seldom made from natural wool. Shoddy yarns, especially in winter goods, are found in the under-filling at the reverse side of the cloth, as thick, tightly twisted yarns, curlier than those from the pure wool. ”

“ I suggest to new manufacturers that they cannot do better than start with the old fashioned pit-looms. It is our experience that on account of less breakage of yarn, especially hand-spun yarn, the output of a pit-loom almost equals and in some cases even exceeds that of the fly-shuttle loom. In weaving broader width, however, the fly-shuttle is certainly more convenient. And when the hand-spun yarn is of good test, it enjoys a decided advantage over the old loom in point of swiftness. ”

“ The dense member of the twist is clearly seen to be the silk thread of the organzine variety, because the constituent fibres are continuous and run parallel with each other. Contrasted with this the woollen yarn is free and open in structure, the most suitable type of wool being medium to long staple. In this yarn the lustre and neatness of the silk imparts an elegant appearance to the fabric, whilst the open structure of the woollen thread removes the baldness of the yarn and adds the essential fullness to the handle as well as softness and warmth. ”