trowbridge museum fact sheet€¦ · “carding” is the process of straightening and spreading...

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Wool preparation including scribbling 1770

A scribbling horse

TROWBRIDGE MUSEUM FACT SHEET

Carding and Slubbing

Fleece PreparationSheep’s fleece has already gone through several time-consuming processes before it gets to the stage where it is ready to be “carded”. Once the sheep has been sheared, the wool needs to be sorted according to type and quality. Then its impurities are removed; in the past this was completed by hand, but in the modern day this is achieved by “carbonisation”- literally burning the impurities out. “Scouring” then takes place to remove natural oils and grease and if a pale colour is required the wool also needs to be bleached.

In Trowbridge it seems to have been usual to dye the wool prior to its being carded and spun. When a different finish is required, the product can be dyed after the cloth has been woven.

Scribbling“Scribbling” was the process that took place before carding. This was an innovation brought to England in the Seventeenth Century by the Dutch and involved pulling the fleece apart into more manageable chunks.

Initially this work was completed by hand but soon a “scribbling horse” was developed. This consisted of a wooden frame with iron teeth set into it. The wool was snagged onto the teeth and then a hand-held carding comb was drawn repeatedly over the teeth, breaking up the lumps and knots in the wool.

By the end of the Eighteenth Century the work of the scribbler could be carried out on a machine. This was a development that was not welcomed by the scribblers, many of whom were too elderly or unfit to perform any of the other tasks in the woollen industry. The new “scribbling engines” made a noise that led them to be known locally as “bumblers”. Sometimes, if the wool was not sufficiently loosened, it would be put through the machines a second time. Modern carding machines can scribble the wool before they card it.

Carding“Carding” is the process of straightening and spreading out the wool fibres prior to spinning. This is most appropriate for short “staple” wools (those with a short length of fibre). Longer staple wools tend to be combed rather than carded.

Carding was performed by hand for personal use and in the early days of the factory system when spinners




A rolag, produced by hand carding fleece

A carding engine, featuring a series of rollers for combing the fleece

Billhead featuring a Gauntlett carding machine. The Gauntlett company was based in Trowbridge


were paid by clothiers to process wool in their own homes. Two carding combs (also called “carders” or “hand-cards”) were brushed together to tease the fibres apart and make them run in the same direction. The combed out wool was removed from the combs with a rolling motion, producing a roll of wool called a “rolag”. Each rolag would then be spun out individually by the spinner.

The process of carding eventually became mechanised in the late Eighteenth Century. The new machines had to be introduced gradually as there was great opposition to them by the workforce, some of whom rioted for fear of losing their jobs.

Mechanised carding is completed on a machine called a “carding set” which comprises a number of rollers covered in metal teeth of various sizes. The prepared wool is loaded onto a wide conveyor belt; in earlier times this was done by hand and was a dangerous job because of the risk for the worker of catching their

Hand held carding combs

fingers, hair or clothing in the machine. Later this task of feeding the carding machine was fully automated.

In a worsted carding machine (working with medium-long stapled wools) the first stage of the process parted the wool. Various toothed rollers served as “swifts”, “strippers” and “licker-ins”, each of which made the mass of wool into a smoother and finer web. The machine could also include a “dickey” for cleaning and clearing the cylinders as well as burring rollers for removing burrs which were notoriously difficult to get out. The final large roller or “doffer” produced a fine film of fibres which was removed by a “doffing comb”.


Preparing the wool for spinningThe next task of the cloth manufacturer was to convert this fine web into individual lengths for putting onto a spinning machine. This was one of the earliest processes to be mechanised and featured the invention of the “slubbing billy” in the late Eighteenth Century.

In a modern factory this job is carried out by an integral “condenser”. This involves the wool being




A mechanised carding machine in action


Slubbing Billy

passed through a pair of calendar rollers and fed through a funnel. After this it is both rubbed and rolled at the same time until it is “condensed” into a “sliver”. This looks like a long, soft rope, with a slight twist in it to keep the fibres together. The sliver or “slubbing” is wound into a ball called a “top”. These slender lengths of wool can be twisted further and “drawn” or stretched on another machine.

The fibres of a long staple wool hold together better than those with a short staple, so they do not have

Condensing Machine


to be twisted as much when they are turned into slivers. These long fibres, all combed to lie in the same direction and of even length are characteristic of worsted cloth. In slubbings made from a shorter staple the fibres fluff out in all directions and the cloth produced from these is simply called “woollen”. It is not considered to be of so fine a quality as worsted.

The first mechanised combing machine was invented by Reverend Edmund Cartwright in around 1790. A later version of the same machine tried to copy the movements of carding by hand. As a result its actions looked like those of a prize fighter of the time called Big Ben and consequently the machine, which did not really catch on, was named after him. Further machines were patented and by the mid-Nineteenth Century hand-carding and combing were things of the past.

Once the wool had been made into rolags (before mechanisation) or slubbings (produced by machine), it was ready to be sent for spinning

trowbridge museum fact sheet€¦ · “carding” is the process of straightening and spreading...

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