Tentering Cloth on a Frame — Stretching Fulled Wool to Set Width and Grain

Tentering is the critical finishing step between fulling and napping that transforms shapeless, shrunken fulled wool into cloth of uniform width and straight grain. The wet fulled fabric is hooked onto rows of L-shaped iron hooks — tenterhooks — driven into the rails of a large outdoor wooden frame, then stretched to its proper dimensions and left to dry in the open air. Without tentering, fulled cloth dries unevenly, shrinks to unpredictable widths, and develops a skewed grain that makes cutting and tailoring impossible. The process was so central to the medieval wool trade that every cloth town maintained communal tentergrounds, and the phrase "on tenterhooks" — meaning in a state of anxious suspense — entered the English language from this very practice. This blueprint covers the complete tentering process using a traditional two-rail tenter frame.