How do you make fine string?

[Sappy]

I've made literally thousands of metres of various cordage thickness from nettle fibre this year but I can't make very fine stuff.

Even when you break down the cordage, the minimum your going to get to is 1 fibre each side which is a weak as hell arrangement as any slight weakness anywhere in the fibre that you'd never detect becomes apparent and 1 strand splices suck.

I've tried using 2 thin fibres either side and scraping and rolling the completed fibre to reduce its diameter but its still invariably thicker than you'd want.

Is the trick to harvest very thin nettles? Or is there a way to extract the fine white threads that are contained within the nettle fibre? If I could get the white threads id be able to make a very strong thread.

The thickness in after is something similar to modern fine sewing thread.

 

[Toddy]

There are whole threads (sorry about the pun ) on making nettle cordage, and also retting out the fine fibres for spinning thread suitable for weaving.

Do you know what flax fibres look like ? Long, pale straw coloured, like strong hairs ? Nettle is softer, shorter and a very pale greenish white.
You will only get tiny (1 or 2% of the dried skins) amounts of fibres from nettles compared to flax (11 to 12%). This makes excellent thread, but for cordage it's a bit like making silk rope........very nice indeed, but total overkill.

What you can do is to take the leaves and then the skins off the nettles. Those fibre rich strips can be used to make very fine cordage indeed, but you need to think ahead.
Soak them and then drain them. Then soak them again and leave them soaking for, at this time of year, maybe 72 hours, then drain them and dry them.
Only when they are dry, start at one end of your bundle and rub it between the palms of your hands. Any of the loose debris that is going to come away easily will do so at this point, *and* it will ease the whole bundle, soften it without all the effort of setting up a flax brake or combs.
The more care you take at this the finer the fibres you can draw out from the bundle.
Now, go and read up about spindle or distaff spinning and when you have the hang of it (at it's simplest a crochet hook in a spud or lump of plasticine) dampen your fingers and pull out some of the fibres. It'll make lovely fine but by no means perfect, singles yarn.
Simply double it up, or chain ply spin for trebles, and there's your fine, fine string and it's sound, and long lasting too

cheers,
Toddy

 

[humblebumble]

Aaah, lovely stuff

You've reminded me I've got a bag of combed tops I borrowed from the big bin by the terrifying carding machine at college.

Happy days

Can you distaff spin from wool tops or is it just for vast fibres?

 

[Toddy]

Distaff is easy on wool Andy
You need to be comfortable doing long draw though, it doesn't do short unless you've got the distaff close to your belt. It can be used to make incredibly fine, fine wool Lovely stuff for lace knitting and weaving. It's how the fine wools for tartan were made before the spinning wheels became common in the 18th century.

With the kind of distaff spinning I mentioned for nettle, I mean more using the distaff itself as the spindle and it's used to wind on too; running it close to the leg, more like the Easten European spindles for cotton and hemp, than our seperate distaff and spindle/whorl set up.

I've a huge bag of merino cardings from New Lanark......I had intended to use it for feltmaking but, there's such a temptation to just spin it fine

cheers,
M

 

[humblebumble]

Aah, long draw. Not got that figured yet. Next time I'm up north I'll have to go see if I can swap long draw spinning for doublefaced card weaving

 

[Toddy]

You're on

I think I'm winning on the deal though.

Long draw works by just allowing 'enough' twist to hold, but not really spin the fibres. It lets you draw out enough that you can fine them into the spin, iimmc ? Just let some of the twist through the pinch point really, and draw the thread until it's as fine as you want.
It's really a worsted technique, but we both know you can fine spin straight from the rolag and just work the thread smooth with your fingers.
There's bound to be a clear technical description somewhere, but like most of these things, it's easier shown in person, and then your own hand/mind interface build in the knack for doing it

Sorry Sappy, we've kind of taken your thread for a wander

cheers,
M

 

[humblebumble]

doubleface card weaving is actually considerably simpler than it looks, by a good long measure. The basic principle is that you warp your deck up in two colours, with one colour in 2 adjacent holes and the other colour in the opposite holes.

Say it's white and black. You then set your pack with all of the white facing towards you and al the black facing away.

Now, to make a white-face cloth, you turn the whole pack forward for two turns. the white will now be facing away from you. To continue making plain white you then turn the whole deck backwards for two turns (for clarity, 90 degree turns)

Now, if you want to make some black come up on the surface, you take the cards you want to be weaving black and slide them forward, to make a second pack above the first.

Now, for clarity, when you're weaving white, what will happen is you'll first turn the white cards once so that all the white threads are on top. then turn them once more so the white threads end on the opposite side.

In order to create two colours, you turn the other pack in the opposite direction.

Say that you start with all white towards you, and you are weaving white with the front pack and black with the back pack. In this instance you will then turn the front pack forwards and the back pack backwards, for two turns. One both packs of cards have been turned twice, they will now be again colour-aligned in the same way as they were in the first place. You can now either continue, add more cards to the black pack, or take some cards back down to the white deck.

To make lettering and knotwork and so on is hereby reasonably simple, provided you work from graph paper. I have some graph paper printed from incompetech.org that is set up with the boxes longer than they are wide. each box represent a full 2-pick 180' turn of both packs. I simply move a ruler up to the next row after each 2 picks, and slide the cards up and down as necessary.

It's of course a time-consuming process, but the results are very satisfying. Also, I've found it's best when tucking the weft to leave a little bit out the side before card turning, then tucking it in before pressing the fell back. if you tuck after, then the weft is compressed and you have to pull it hard to take it in, which causes it to stretch out. Then the band just gets narrower and narrower and the selvedge threads end up getting way too tight. Only figured this out myself the other day. Of course, I was using lurex with an elastane ply in it, which doesn't help cause there's nothing elastane likes better than recovering from stretch ;-)

Also, you're better weaving this stuff on a fixed loom. I've also started using a comb behind the cards to keep each card's ends seperated. I'm actually using a bit of an industrial comb that must have been salvaged from a knotting setup at some point, but you can use a normal comb of some kind, and if it's pushing too wide, just turn it diagonal a wee bitty.

You can weave it back-strap but I've gone off that as it's next to impossible to create even patterns due to the difficulty in maintaining an even tension across the band. I'm sure you've got an inkle sitting about somewhere. If i'm weaving long bands I simply wrap the excess warp around the final peg several times and secure it with a half hitch. Do the same with the finished cloth. When you want to advance the warp, simply turn the wound warp forward the required amount and pick up the slack by doing the same with the cloth.

I have so far been using the whole pack in the S orientation, but I'm told you're better of orientating the cards S,Z,S,Z which apparently allows for smoother diagonal lines. Even so, I like the results I'm getting so far.

I was going to attach some images, but they need to be on the web first, so I've just put them up on my blog, where I've copied the main body of this message.

I'm going to start doing instructional videos, and this will probably be one of the first ones I do. Be a month or two yet though, as I'm all on top with the busy-ness

Andrew

 

[humblebumble]

oh yeah, link

http://weave4fun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/10/doubleface-card-weaving-is-actually.html