machine wash "pure" Merino wool ???

[Elen Sentier]

Found this on Bison Bushcraft (nice site) ...
[h=2]Merino Wool Buff[/h] 100% Machine washable natural merino wool. This excellent piece of kit can be used as a scarf, beanie hat, balaclava, bandage, hand warmer, water filter……
The options go on forever.

Product Price: £21.50


If you can sucessfully machine wash it, without it shrinking and felting, then it ain't "pure" wool but has summat added to it. The act of washing, especially all the rubbing, makes the scales on the surface of each strand of the wool clamp together - felting! Along with the heat, this process will also shrink the garment. If it really is pure wool you cannot be sure of it on the gentle and cool cycles. Most of the wool I've seen advertised in bushcraft shops has elastane or some such added to it - no longer pure wool - and has undergone some pre-shink processes of wetting and heating to high temperature before it comes to you.

I like the piece of kit, not sure it's sufficiently fine to be a successful water filter either, but it's a nice head-thingy. Think I'll knit myself one ... wool buff that is, not water filter

 

[John Fenna]

Buffs are great kit
Merino wool buffs are the absolute acme of headovers - I have several and never go anywhere without one ... they can be hat, scarf, balaclava, handkerchief, glove and 100 other things - top kit indeed!

 

[treadlightly]

Chocolate Fish, which makes very high quality merino stuff, actually recommend machine washing over hand washing. Their reasoning is that the wool cycles on modern machines are so gentle that the wool won't be damaged and the machine will also wash at the right temperature.

Having said that I prefer hand washing anything I think might shrink or felt.

 

[Toddy]

Basically the wool has been chemically treated to strip off the little scales that would lock together and bind the wool into felt. There's nothing left on the wool so it doesn't cause any allergic reactions, and it does mean that machine washing is possible.
Personally I feel the wool isn't as soft to handle or wear, but it's a very minor difference.

Tbh, lightly felted (fulled) wool is both comfortable, hard wearing and generally stable. It means shrinkage of fabric though and that doesn't sit well with those whose bottom line is how much they can make.

cheers,
Toddy.......who's become a real fan of a recycled fibre snood that was a present from the gentleman who posted above in post#2

 

[EdS]

Sorry Toddy but you are wrong on this one.

For a start its not the wool scales that cause the itch factor -- it is the ends of course fibres and broken fibres. The scales are way less than 1um. Even cotton and other natural fibres may have "scales" or surface blemishes creater than this. On high quality (not cheap stuff & certain "quality" brands- ) merino super & ultra fine are so fine as not to be a problem as the fibres buckle on contact with anything. On courser wool the ends of the fibres dig into the skin and irritate.

Chemical treatment - chlorine or polymer - reduces the micron count ie thickness of the wool to overcome this. It is not removing the scales per se. Certainly on the Chocolatefish stuff they have not been chemically or mechanically treated - I know as I've seem the electron microscope scans.

It is all about the micron count of the fibre as it comes from the sheep --- though some wool is treated to redcue it. On the less quality brands treatment is not primary to remove scales but to reduce the micron count to claim it as fine/ super fine.

As for wool, scales and felting the crimp of the wool, and how it causes fibre to "corkscrew" around each other has as much effect if not more on the felting of wool. If you get enough crimp into any fibre - natural or synthertic (with out any scales) you can felt it.



On a modern good washing machine the wool cycle is more gentle than you could ever achieve by hand. When I used to work around the mills (when we had them) most of the test swatches in the labs where machine washed as it was more gentle than hand washing - that included the very, very, high spec worsteds from John Foster (Black Dyke mill)

I wash all my wool in the machine - even my completely hand made (hand carded, spun, knitted etc) Herdwick jumper with no shrinkage or felting. Hard agitation on cotton cycle etc causes more ofthe fibres to rub against each other and therefore a) scales lock but b) the crimp causes the fibres to twist around each other.


Remember though -- don't use fabric conditioner on wools as it basically kills their ability to wick. Wool actually wicks via the fibre rather than via surface capilary action due to the knit as in synthertics.

Normal wash power is to harsh for fine / super fine wools. As is old style soap flakes. This is one that one ofthe old mill chemists told me - not only do they not disolve at a "safe" temperature the pH is high enough damage wool after repeated washes. They could not do dye tests on wool washed in soap flakes as it residue soap raise the pH enough to alter the chemistry of the dye mix. pH is very cafefully controlled in dye houses as only slight changes cna lead to big colour chances - especially with Cr based dyes.