were making pieces only twenty-five yards long and selling them as thirty (the regulation length).
Instead of simply carding the wool, the Flemish combed it. The hand-comber employed two combs—one as a "pad" comb, which was fixed to a post by an iron rod. The raw material, after being properly prepared, washed, oiled, and separated into convenient handfuls, was lashed into the comb upon the pad. Thus loaded with wool, the comb was placed in a stove adapted to the purpose and called the comb-pot, and when properly heated, one comb upon the post, the other held in the hand, the process of combing began, each comb becoming a working comb alternately, the teeth of one passing through the tuft of wool upon the other, until the fibers became perfectly smooth, straight, and free of short wool, or "noil," which was left imbedded in the comb-heads—the residue being called the "top."[1] The illustration shows how the hand-comb differed from the card used in the preparation of the wool for the woolen yarn.
Fig. 13.—A Pair of Hand-combs.
The material when thus combed differed from the same material carded, in that the combed wool contained only the long fibers, which lay parallel, the short fibers or noil having been altogether rejected or combed out. The carding eliminates no noil. Long and short fibers go together to the spindle. Thus it happens that a woolen yarn is soft and fluffy, while a worsted yarn is hard and firm, possessing a much greater tensile strength. In the woolen yarn the fibers are tangled and crossed, and drawing is avoided as much as possible in preparing the raw material for spinning, so as to leave the natural curvature of the fibers undisturbed and afford the greatest freedom of action to the felting quality of the wool. In worsted yarns the object is to obliterate the felting
- ↑ The origin of the word "top" is attributed to the fact that the product of the hand-comber was wound by him into a ball which took on a shape quite like that of a boy's top—large above, and tapering nearly to a point. The origin of the word "noil" is not as satisfactorily explained. Vickerman says that the term is from the Latin, and means "knotty," or "not do"; but this is at least doubtful.
