A drum carder is used to turn raw wool into batts, to blend different fibers, and to blend colors in dyed fibers. I'm certainly not an expert when it comes to drum carding--this carder isn't even mine. I've checked it out from the Tennessee Valley Handspinners Guild, one of the perks of being a member, and I've been carding everything in sight. These are the directions as I was taught; I'm sure there are plenty of other ways to use a drum carder.
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I'm not sure what brand of drum carder this one is, or even if it's no brand at all. It has a hand-built feel. When the drive band is properly attached (as in the picture), when the crank is turned the big drum rolls quickly in one direction and the little drum rolls slowly in the other direction. Wool is fed into the tray and the drums open and align the locks and wrap most of the wool onto the big drum. |
Feed the wool into the tray, controlling its intake with one hand while cranking the carder with your other hand. It won't take a lot of wool to fill the big drum. When you notice a lot of wool sticking to the smaller drum, the big drum is full.
You need two tools to effectively use a drum carder. One is a batt picker and the other is a doffer. Here they are in action:
| Run the batt picker along the groove in the big drum and pull the wool up so you can remove it from the drum. |
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To remove the wool most easily, pull it backwards off the drum teeth, turning the drum as needed. Use the doffer to help you remove the wool and also to pick up any stray strands that remain stuck in the teeth. Don't drag the doffer along the teeth, just sort of touch it to the teeth and pick up the wool. Also, notice how I've moved around to the back of the drum carder. If you try to remove your wool the other direction you'll mess up your doffer and your carder's teeth. |
Once you've run wool through the carder once, you really need to run it through at least once more to fully open the fibers. Pull the new batt into two so that you have two roughly square pieces. Feed the first square through just like you did with the raw wool, then feed the second square through.
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Control how fast the fiber is being drawn into the carder with your free hand. |
After running your batt through as many times as you like (I find that three times is plenty in most cases), you'll need to clean your drums before making another batt. Use your doffer, the same way you do when removing a batt, to clean all the wool off the big drum, then do the same thing to remove wool from the small drum.
A few tips: when carding fiber for a particular project, make sure to run all the batts through the same number of times. Also, when blending fibers or colors, don't try and blend the first time through the carder; do your blending the second time through and finish up with a third time to fully blend the fibers/colors.
The wool shown in the pictures is polypay, deliciously soft and fine. I couldn't wait to work with it, so I took one of the batts I carded and spun it up. This gives you an idea of how much yarn you'll get from an average batt.
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I bought the polypay wool as fleece from Homestead Wool & Gift Farm; I was very impressed by their prices, shipping time, and the quality of the wool. Keep an eye on my Work in Progress page for what I plan to do with the polypay once it's spun.
| To the right are some batts I've made on this drum carder, blending different fibers and colors. The white batt is wool blended with just a little blue mohair. The colored batts are wool dyed with Easter egg dyes and either carded as one color or blended together. The pink/yellow batt was made by keeping the colors on each side of the carder as I fed the wool in, causing it to only blend in the middle; the blue-green batt above it was made by feeding a little blue wool in with the green. Check out the crochet page to see what I did with the wool once I spun it up. |
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