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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.
Beginner
An afternoon
Instructions
1
1
Load and card
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.
Materials for this step:
Cotton Lint100 gTools needed:
Hand Carders2
2
Strip the card
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).
Tools needed:
Hand Carders3
3
Roll off a sliver
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.
Tools needed:
Hand Carders4
4
Double, draw and add a little twist
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.
Tools needed:
Drop SpindleMaterials
1- 100 gPlaceholder
Tools Required
2- Placeholder
- Placeholder
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