carding - Hand carding, Machine carding, History

The blending and disentanglement of fibres prior to subsequent spinning processes. The fibres are passed between a series of rollers covered in projecting steel wires and rotating at different speeds.

Carding is the processing of brushing raw or washed fibers to prepare them as textiles. A large variety of fibers can be carded, anything from dog hair, to llama, to soy silk (a fiber made from soy beans). Cotton, wool and bast are probably the most common fibers to be carded. Not all fibers are carded.

Carding can also be used to create mixes of different fibers, or different colors. Some hand-spinners have a small drum carder at home especially for the purpose of mixing together the different colored fiber that they buy already carded. Some drum carders even come with directions on how to best card two colors at once.

The two main ways to card fibers are by hand, and by machine.

Hand carding

Hand carders, or "raising cards", look similar to dog brushes. Carding is an activity done sitting down outside or over a drop cloth, depending on the wool's cleanliness. Carders hold a carder in each hand and place the carder in their non-dominant hand (left for most people) on their leg. Catching too many fibers makes it too hard to pull the carders apart. Once all the wool has transferred, carders repeat this process until all the fibers are in line. They then roll up their carded wool into a neat rolag.

Hand carders come in a wide variety of sizes, from ones two by two inches to ones four by eight inches. The small ones are called flick carders, and are used just to flick the ends of a lock of hair, or to tease out some strands for spinning off of. The density of the teeth, and the shape of the carders also varies. For finely carded rolags, one uses carders with more teeth. The type of fiber, its length, weight and characteristics, can also determine how many teeth are wanted per inch on the carders. Hand carders can be either flat backed or curved- this is a matter of personal preference.

Machine carding

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Machine carding is done on a device called a drum carder. The carders used currently in woolen mills differ very little from machines used twenty to fifty years ago, and in some cases the machines are from that era. The other drum takes the fibers from the first drum, and, in the process of transferring them form one drum to another, the fibers are straightened out and told to be orderly. (A rolag differs from a roving ( or ) because it is not a continuous strand, and because the fibers end up going across instead of along the strand.) Cotton fibers are fed into the machine, picked up and brushed onto flats when carded.

History

In 1748 Lewis Paul invented the hand driven carding machine in Birmingham, England. A coat of wire slips were placed around a card which was then wrapped around a cylinder.

Carding of wool can either be done "in the grease" or not, depending on the type of machine and on the spinner's preference. The large drum carders do not tend to get along well with lanolin, so most woolen mills wash the wool before carding. Hand carders (and small drum carders too, though the directions may not recommend it) can be used to card lanolin rich wool.