Cotton Roving by Hand: Carded, Drawn and Lightly Twisted

Roving is cotton made ready to spin: the fibres combed parallel, drawn into a long strand and given just enough twist to hold together. Mills did it with carding engines, drawing frames and roving frames; Andrew Ure (1839) explains them by the hand cards they copied. This is the hand version, from ginned lint. The picture: carding with a pair of hand cards in Ecuador.

مبتدئ

An afternoon

التعليمات

Load and card

Spread a thin layer of lint on one hand card. Brush the other card across it, teeth against teeth, again and again until the fibres lie parallel.

المواد لهذه الخطوة:

القطن المحلوج100 غ

الأدوات المطلوبة:

مشطا تمشيط يدويان

Strip the card

Turn one card round so its teeth face the other way and draw it across: it lifts the whole layer off in one web (Ure's stripping position).

الأدوات المطلوبة:

مشطا تمشيط يدويان

Roll off a sliver

Roll the stripped web off the card into a loose, untwisted rope: a sliver. Card the rest of the lint the same way.

الأدوات المطلوبة:

مشطا تمشيط يدويان

Double, draw and add a little twist

Lay two or three slivers together and draw them out to the length of one; repeat a few times to even out thick and thin places, as the mills' drawing frames did. Draw the strand to about pencil thickness. It now pulls apart easily, so give it a little twist with a slowly turning spindle and wind it on loosely. That twist is what makes it roving.

الأدوات المطلوبة: