What makes wool

With the advent of synthetic fibers, the global demand for wool sharply decreased. Even so, wool innovations have continued unabated. Superwool is a kind of wool that you can wash in a washing machine and tumble dry, and a Japanese company even invented a type of wool suit in that you can wash in the shower and dry within a matter of hours.

The production of wool begins with the shearing of wool-bearing animals. Some animals bear wool once per year, and others bear wool multiple times throughout the year. Next, the shorn wool is cleaned and sorted into bales. There are a variety of ways to remove the greasy lanolin in raw wool, but most large wool producers use chemical catalysts for this process. Once the wool fibers are clean and sorted, they are carded, which is the process of making the fibers into long strands. These carded strands are then spun into yarn, and after a final washing, this yarn can be woven into garments and other types of woolen textiles.

Lastly, the finished textiles may be exposed to a variety of post-production processes to develop certain attributes. Fulling, for instance, is the immersion of a wool textile in water to make the fibers interlock, and crabbing is the process of permanently setting this interlock. Lastly, wool producers may decate their products for shrink-proofing purposes, and rarely, they may also dye their finished wool products. Over the years, human beings have found hundreds of ways to use wool.

While wool is primarily used in consumer applications, this substance is also popular in industrial applications for its durability and flame-retardant qualities. Australian Wool Innovation Limited provides weekly price reports for wool per kilogram. Wool is, therefore, significantly more expensive than cotton, which is its main competitor on the world stage.

It is quite a bit more expensive than most synthetic alternatives, but it also offers unique benefits that synthetic fabrics do not. The vast majority of merino sheep are bred in Australia, and wool from merino sheep is used to make all sorts of different kinds of garments and industrial materials. This type of wool can have a diameter of under 20 microns, which makes it one of the finest types of woolen products in existence.

While merino sheep were originally bred in Spain, hardly any merino wool production still occurs in this European country. Cashmere is one of the most expensive and luxurious types of wool. With hair diameters as small as 18 microns, cashmere is just as soft and fine as merino wool.

The high price of cashmere wool, however, comes from the fact that cashmere goats can only produce around grams of wool per year, which makes this type of wool a highly desired commodity.

Mohair wool comes from angora goats, which have incredibly thick, wavy wool. While other types of wool may not be highly crimped, the wavy hair of angora goats naturally leads to high-crimp woolen textiles. Although human race domesticated sheep somewhere between BC and BC they were more hairy than wooly and had to be bred by selection somewhere around BC. First woven wool garments date from BC to BC. At about the same time woolly-sheep came to Europe from the Near East. In the beginning, wool was plucked from the sheep by hand or by bronze combs.

The first shear appeared in the Iron Age. In medieval times the wool trade became serious business and whole series of fair, like Champagne, were mainly based on wool trading and economy of whole regions depended on it.

Major exporters of raw wool were England and Castile. Wool; trade was so important for England that it imposed special tax laws on wool export and the presiding officer of the House of Lords has sat on the "Woolsack", a chair stuffed with wool which was a symbol of the pre-eminence of the wool trade. After the Restoration fine English wool began to compete with silk on the international market.

The Medici and other great houses of Florence had built their wealth on their textile industry based on wool. In the 16th century, Spain allowed export of Merino lambs, a breed of ship that gives highly valued type of wool, only with royal permission.

The German wool market in time overtook British wool which in turn was overtaken by Australia's colonial economy which was based on sheep raising.

In middle 20th century, wool production falls because of the appearing of the synthetic fibers. Super wash wool or washable wool , a type of wool that is specially treated so it can be washed in machine and tumble-dried, first appeared in the early s.

This type of wools is produced by washing of wool in acid or by coating the fiber with a polymer. Both methods lessen the number of scales which attaching to each other while washing untreated wool in water and cause shrinkage. In , a new wool suit was made from Australian Merino wool in Japan that can be washed in the shower and dried within hours with no ironing required.

Wool is generally used for clothing but it is also used for blankets, horse rugs What Makes it Stand Out Wool keeps extremely warm and allow air to retain heat. Wool is a biodegradable fabric can decompose in 3to4 months the time of decomposition depends on variety of soil, climate, characteristic. It is recyclable fabric shredded into individual fibers and reused to make new clothing. Flame-resistant fabric is heavy, inflexible and uncomfortable to wear Scientist work on wool properties to improve flame protection and make fabric breathable and absorbent to make it comfortable to wear.

Although machinery can make the process much faster today, in most ways the process is the same as how people have been preparing wool for centuries. Shearing leaves them with a thin, cool coat for the summer months. A simple step of washing the wool with removes dirt, other contaminants, and natural oils from the wool. Some of these byproducts of cleaning the wool get used for other purposes. Lanolin, a wax secreted by sheep that helps to protect their wool, is included in many beauty products such as skin moisturizer.

Next, the wool fibers go through carding, a process that pulls them through fine metal teeth. Sheep wool is naturally curly; carding straightens out the fibers and makes them soft and fluffy.

Originally, carding would be done by hand using two metal combs. Today, most manufacturers use machines to card large batches of wool more quickly. Each fiber is elastic to an extent, allowing it to be stretched 25 to 30 percent before breaking. Wool does, however, have a tendency to shrink when wet.

While some of the characteristics of wool can be altered through genetic engineering of sheep, most of the modifications of design are implemented during the manufacturing of the fabric. Wool can be blended with any number of natural or synthetic fibers, and various finishes and treatments can also be applied. Different types of fleece are used in producing wool. Lambs' wool is fleece that is taken from young sheep before the age of eight months. Because the fiber has not been cut, it has a natural, tapered end that gives it a softer feel.

Pulled wool is taken from animals originally slaughtered for meat and is pulled from the pelt using various chemicals. The fibers of pulled wool are of low quality and produce a low-grade cloth. Virgin wool is wool that has never been processed in any manner before it goes into the manufacturing phase. This term is often misunderstood to mean higher quality, which is not necessarily the case. These wools and others can be used in the production of two categories of woolen fabrics: woolens and worsteds.

Woolens are made up of short, curly fibers that tend to be uneven and weak. They are loosely woven in plain or indistinct patterns.

Usually woolens have a low thread count and are not as durable as worsteds. They do, however, make soft, fuzzy, and thick fabrics that are generally warmer than their counterparts. The deep wrinkles on imported A-type Merino ewes left and rams right contributed to increased wool yields per sheep for American wool producers.

The mechanization of the woolen cloth industry provides a heady example of the extent of nineteenth-century industrial change. Every step of the process, except shearing the sheep and sorting the wool into different grades, was mechanized between and Only the organic aspects of shearing live animals and the value judgments required of human sorters resisted mechanical replication until the twentieth century. Growth of the American woolen trade was based on more than mechanical change, however.

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, American sheep provided wool that was quite satisfactory for "homespun," the rough, durable cloth woven by hand on looms owned by professional weavers who set up shop or moved from town to town with their looms. But domestic cloth was overshadowed in quality by imported material. Several varieties of sheep bred in England and Europe produced wool vastly superior in quality to American-produced wool.

The importation of breeds such as the English Southdowns and Spanish Merinos improved domestic quality and allowed the American woolen industry to compete with the best imports. The Merino sheep, in particular, with their deeply wrinkled folds producing large quantities of wool, caused a stir among American farmers in the early part of the century.

A few "gentlemen farmers" avoided Spanish export restrictions and imported some Merinos. As wool prices rose during the embargo of , a "Merino craze" occurred that pushed the price of fine wool and purebred animals to record levels.

Then, in , an American diplomat arranged the importation of 20, purebred Merinos, and the woolen industry from Vermont to Pennsylvania to Ohio was changed forever. Worsted fabrics are made of long, straight fibers with considerable tensile strength.