I went to the monthly meeting of the Tennessee Valley Handspinners Guild (www.tnvalleyhandspinners.com) yesterday and took on a trial to wash some wool for one of the members who had bought two fleeces at a wool and sheep show some time back.
The two types of wool (Ramboulet and Coopworth) are totally different and both are fairly dirty/full of vegetable matter (vm) so she hadn't got too far with preparation. I was telling her about our method for the Clun Forest and said I'd give some samples a go to see what it would do for these two types respectively.
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| The samples and sample locks from each |
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The first trial I did was to take a few locks of each and run it through exactly the same cycle as we used on the Clun Forest. This cleaned up the wool to a degree, but didn't remove too much of the vm. I took the washed locks of each and in the case of the Ramboulet, I flicked the locks open with a flick carder, and for the Coopworth I used my combs. In both cases this removed almost all of the vm.
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| The flicked Ramboulet and combed (top) Coopworth |
I did a little bit of spinning - the Coopworth was a breeze, but the Ramboulet from the flicked locks was a pain to keep consistent (given I was spinning it very finely). I'll need to try some different carding techniques on it.
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| Coopworth 2 ply fine and medium |
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| Ramboulet 2 ply fine |
The next effort will be another small sample using 'Power Scour' instead of straight detergent, then perhaps two washes instead of one, and finally fine tuning the water temperature, which according to documentation should be different for both. Once I have the best parameters I'll wash the approximate 8 oz of each and see how it turns out.
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