Making Stuff, Week 7: My New Drum Carder

Posted: February 26th, 2010 | Author: Hellchick | Filed under: DIY, Making Stuff Series, Spinning | 13 Comments »

So many things to write about this week! And the first one isn’t something I’ve made but something Matt’s dad made…my new custom-made drum carder! I’m so excited! But before I get too ahead of myself, let me just remind you that I’m posting this for WonderWhyGal’s Fiber Arts Friday extravaganza, so don’t forget to check out what other cool stuff people are doing.

I’ve said before that Matt’s dad loves making things. He’s seventy-five and retired, and he’s been machining and making things pretty much his whole life, and the stuff he makes is very good. He loves new projects and if he’s not already working on something for himself he’s looking around Matt’s house for things to make or improve. And a few months ago when he came to visit I was in the middle of drum carding some of my alpaca’s fleece into batts on my Louet Junior drum carder.

I bought the carder used at a pretty good price. I had saved up my pennies to get a drum carder but after researching I knew there was just no way I was going to get one of the really nice full-sized popular models for any price I could afford right now, and hand-carding all of my alpaca just simply wasn’t going to cut it. Even used, nice carders like Strauch or Pat Green go for several hundred dollars, and motorized carders can sell for, at minimum, $1000. After researching and then looking in my wallet and then researching and looking one more time in my wallet hoping that the bills had just magically multiplied like bunnies while I wasn’t looking — only to realize in dismay that they hadn’t — I settled on the Louet Junior, a half-sized model that seemed to get a fairly equal smattering of great reviews and “meh” reviews. Given that, like most spinning equipment, drum carders always seem to have good resale value and tend to go fast as soon as they’re put up for sale, I figured that at worst I could resell it if I wasn’t happy with it and save up for a different model.

When I showed Matt what I wanted to get he said, “you know, my dad could probably make one of those.” I admit that I wasn’t really sure — it seemed like drum carders had specific, precise measurements. And then I realized that we were talking about a man who can machine things within 1/1000 of an inch.

Regardless, he wouldn’t be able to make one without having one to examine, and so I figured that since we didn’t even know if he would want to make one or could, I would go ahead and get it and I’d have a drum carder and he’d have one to look at.

When Matt’s dad came over he had no idea what I was doing, so I explained what the drum carder was and he was utterly fascinated. I mentioned that it was a half-sized model and that, while it did the job, there were a few things I probably would want to be different if I ever got a different carder. He said he’d love to make one and that it really wouldn’t be that difficult as long I could get the carding cloth, which I knew I could get. In fact, I decided it would be useful to get a carding cloth with a TPI (tines per inch) that was higher than the one on the Louet so I’d have some versatility in carders. I went with a 90 TPI, slightly more than the Louet’s 72 but not as high as my Schacht hand carders, which are 112. (The higher the TPI, the finer the fiber the cloth is meant to card.)

In case you’re interested, I got the carding cloth from the fine people at Howard Brush. They were very informative, quick to respond, and give great customer service, which was a contrast with the place I’d originally tried to order the cloth from, Woodland Woolworks. I’m not even going to provide a link to them — I ordered the cloth back in November and was told it was backordered for at least three weeks, which was fine, but after five weeks when I contacted them I was told, “a week to ten days,” and when we finally started getting into mid-February I had heard that at least two or three times. Not only that, they accidentally sent me a “your order has shipped” email…for someone else’s order! I thought it was my carding cloth and got all excited, but when it failed to arrive and I contacted them to find out where it was, they said they must have accidentally sent me the wrong order email. And how long would my carding cloth take to come in? You guessed it: a week to ten days.

Matt’s dad was getting really impatient — he had most of the drum carder put together and only needed the carding cloth to begin the final phase. So I contacted Howard Brush and they told me that not only did they have what I wanted in stock but that they could ship it out the next day, and that’s what they did. The only difference was that I had to order it in foot-long increments as opposed to the inch-increments from Woodland Woolworks, so I had to get four feet of it even though I only needed thirty-eight inches. It turned out to still be cheaper to order more of it from Howard Brush than it was to get it — if I was ever going to — from Woodland Woolworks. So please, buy from Howard Brush and support them if you plan to order anything like what they sell.

Anyway, Once the cloth came in he brought the finished drums over in a makeshift holder that allowed us to measure how far apart they needed to be — that was really the only thing he wasn’t sure about. The Louet’s teeth mesh, something I really didn’t like (though some do), so I asked people on Spin-List if they could tell me how far apart the teeth were on their drum carders. Someone replied that the test is being able to just slide an index card between them — perfect! We could replicate that, and so we did. He took it home and a few days later…voila! He brought over the finished product, and I was absolutely floored with how beautiful it is. It’s not just a drum carder, it’s a thing of beauty. Even just in aesthetics it beats anything out there, in my opinion.

I’m just stunned at how beautiful this thing is. And it’s surprisingly lightweight — he took some weight out by making the drums hollow (without making them too delicate to card with) and added a great handle in the perfect place. For some reason the Louet has a weird leather loop only big enough to hook a finger or two in, and it’s heavy enough that it’s awkward and painful to carry that way so I’m not sure why they even bothered with that.

Of course, the real test is this: how does it card? Naturally I ran to my fiber room and grabbed some of Silverton’s fleece for the final test. Let me tell you, this thing makes a beautiful batt. It turned like butter, didn’t tear at my fleece like the Louet can do if a heavy lock manages to sneak in there or the carder gets a little too full. (Louet’s literature on the Junior model insists that it can make the same three ounce batts that full-sized models make, but I cannot put more than one ounce of fiber on there or the fiber tears and I get neps.)

I haven’t had a chance this week to sit down and do any carding beyond the initial test, but I can’t wait to get to it on Sunday when I plan to card some Silverton locks for my Silverton Sweater project and the dry fleece I finished washing this week from Benz for the last of the commissioned yarn project. I couldn’t wait to share my enthusiasm, though, and sent a picture of the carder along to Spin-List, which prompted several spinners to ask how much Matt’s dad would charge to make some more. Sadly this is a one-time thing; at 75 he isn’t interested in going into business and prefers to work on his own projects. Occasionally he just likes trying something new and my spinning equipment caught his eye, and I think he just wanted to see if he could do it for the exercise.

The carder stole the show this week as Most Awesome Thing Made In The World Ever, but Matt also whipped something up for me: a fiber rack for my fiber room. I had noticed we had a couple of old and slightly beat-up wooden coat racks in the toolshed; Matt said he wanted to put one up in the utility room to hang his fishing gear from, and the other one he hung this week in the barn stall we don’t use so we can keep the pasture-cleaning shovel, dustpan, and other tools we use within the pasture nearby. Although I want to put some nice wooden shelving up at some point in the fiber room I had liked the idea of hanging one of these coat racks, or something like them, in the room to hang skeins that need washing, roving I’ve dyed that I want to keep within eyesight for project ideas, and more. I like having my fiber out and accessible so I can see what I have rather than keeping it tucked away in plastic bins in the closet, which is where it is now. If it’s out and I can see it, I have far more ideas for fiber combinations, colorways I’d like to create, and basically I just get inspired by the fibers I see when I go in and spin. It helps me to remember what exactly I have.

So Matt reproduced the coat rack for me from some dowels he got and some wood we had in the barn. It’s perfect, and I love seeing some of my finished yarns and rovings hanging from it.

And yes, there’s been some actual fiber work this week. I tackled another dye project this week — nothing so scientific as single dye color tests (I’ll get back to those soon enough) but just something fun. I took eight ounces of some superwash Blue-Faced Leicester and dyed them in burgundy, gold, and chestnut.

Judging from the color chart I had assumed the chestnut, which you can barely see in this pic, would come out far more brown than it did. Instead it looks more like a burgundy that’s been drabbed with a lot of gray. It’s not bad, it’s just that there’s not enough contrast, at least visibly in the roving, to really see it between the gold and burgundy.

Spinning Term: “Superwash”
Most sheep wool will felt (become a tangled mat of fabric) when exposed to heat and agitation — for instance, when you throw that nice hand-wash-only cashmere sweater into the hot washing machine and it comes out as a tiny, matted replica of its former self. Superwash wool is wool that’s been treated by a process that renders it incapable of felting, thus allowing products made with it to be machine washed safely.

Regardless of the less than inspiring chestnut colors, I actually think the chestnut is going to be a bit more noticeable once it’s spun and I’m happy with it. I’m spinning this into superfine singles that I’ll then ply into a 3-ply sock yarn — not chain-plied as is typical, but a standard 3-ply. I kind of want to see the colors interplay that way. And I’m deliberately trying to spin it finer than the Falkland/alpaca/nylon blend I recently created and have been knitting with. While I love that yarn so far the resulting gauge is just a touch thicker than I had intended or liked.

And finally, remember the “Blood Orange” batts I showed off last week? I took all six ounces of them to this past weekend’s Eastside Spin-In (I would have worked on the commissioned yarn but I still had more fleece to wash and dry) and managed to get them all spun into a nice, roughly-worsted-weight single. I plied it with gold embroidery thread and I really, really love the result. I ended up with two skeins of roughly 155 yards each, which is just perfect. This will go up in my Etsy shop once they’re washed and dried. I’m not sure what to call it yet.

I have even more to show off, but I’m going to save it for next week — I dyed some BFL and some mohair locks for an art yarn I got a flash of inspiration for earlier this week. I’ll be calling it, “Green Apple Martini and Keep ‘Em Comin’.” I’d show you how I dyed the fibers in preparation for it but I don’t want to spoil the surprise as I plan to spin that one this week and show it off next time. I also got the beginnings of another art yarn idea that I jotted down and plan to call, “You and Your Filthy Sea Shanties.” I’m not even going to describe that one, I just want you to think about what that yarn could look like until it’s made.

Until next week, check out all the other Fiber Arts Friday posts over at WonderWhyGal’s blog!

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