Yarn Counts And Calculations

Thomas Woodhouse

Description

YARN COUNTS AND CALCULATIONS. Originally published in 1921. ONE of the first essential or desirable requirements in the preparation and spinning of yarn, as well as in the subsequent operations of cloth structure and weaving, is an adequate knowledge of the subject of Yarn Counts and of Calculations relating thereto. This treatise, gives consideration to many different fibres, and to yarns made from them, by an elucidation of twenty-two different systems of counting yarns as practised in the various districts of the United Kingdom, on the Continent, and in America. The value of the work is that it not only provides the textile student of any branch with practically all that is required to prepare him for his examinations, but also acts as a reference book for spinners, manufacturers, and merchants. Many of the earliest books on weaving, textiles and needlework, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republish

Sujets

• Techniques
• Technologies de Fabrication
• Technologies de fabrication

Informations

• Publié par: Read Books Ltd.
• Date de parution: 28 juin 2021
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528761734
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

OXFORD TECHNICAL MANUALS

YARN COUNTS AND CALCULATIONS

BY

THOMAS WOODHOUSE

TEXTILE EXPERT, AND HEAD OF THE WEAVING AND DESIGNING DEPARTMENT, DUNDEE TECHNICAL COLLEGE AND SCHOOL OF ART; FORMERLY MANAGER, MESSRS. WALTON & CO., LINEN MANUFACTURERS, BLEACHERS AND FINISHERS, KNARESBOROUGH; HONOURS MEDALLIST OF THE CITY AND GUILDS OF LONDON TECHNICAL INSTITUTE IN WOOL AND WORSTED WEAVING AND IN LINEN WEAVING

AUTHOR OF “The Handicraft Art of Weaving,” “Healds and Reeds for Weaving: Setts and Porters,” “The Finishing of Jute and Linen Fabrics”; Joint Author of “Juta and Linen Weaving: Mechanism,” “Textile Design: Pure and Applied,” “Jute and Jute Spinning,” “Cordage and Cordage Hemp and Fibres,” “The Jute Industry from Seed to Finished Cloth,” “An Introduction to Jute Weaving,” “Textile Mathematics,” “Textile Machine Drawing,” “Textile Mechanics,” etc.

LONDON

HENRY FROWDE AND HODDER & STOUGHTON

THELANCETBUILDING

1 & 2 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C.2

Copyright © 2013 ReaP Books LtP. This book is copyright anP may not be reproPuceP or copieP in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing

British Library Cataloguing-in-ublication Data A catalogue recorP for this book is available from the British Library

A History of Textiles and Weaving

A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material con sisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres, often referred to as ‘thread’ or ‘yarn’. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands. Textiles are then in turn, formed by weaving, knitting, crocheting, k notting, or pressing fibres together (felt). The words ‘fabric’ and ‘cloth’ are used in textile assembly trades (such as tailoring and dressmaking) as synonyms fortextile. However, there are subtle differences in these terms in specialized usage.Textile refers to any material made of interlacing fibres.Fabric refers ing,to any material made through weaving, knitt spreading, crocheting, or bonding that may be used in production of further goods (garments, etc.). And finally,Cloth may be used synonymously withfabricoften but refers to a finished piece of fabric used for a spe cific purpose (e.g.,table cloth).

The word 'textile' comes from Latin,textilis, meaning 'woven' (fromtextus, the past participle of the verbtexere, 'to weave'). From ancient origins, the production of textiles has altered almost beyond recognition however. Indu strialisation and the introduction of modern manufacturing techniques have changed both t he working methods — speed and scale, and the end product itself. For some typ es of textiles though; plain weave, twill, or satin weave, there is little difference b etween the ancient and modern methods. Textile production has been evidenced as early as N eolithic times. In 2013, linen cloth was found at the ‘Çatalhöyük’ site (Turkey), dated at around 700 BCE. Another fragment has been found in Fayum (a city in middle Egypt), dated to about 5000 BCE. Flax was the predominant fibre in Egypt at this tim e (3600 BCE), hugely popular in the Nile Valley, though wool became the primary fibre u sed in other cultures around 2000 BCE.

Emerging from these early examples, weaving has dev eloped into an enormous industry. Essentially, weaving is a method of fabri c production in which two distinct sets of yarns are interlaced at right angles to form a f abric. Other techniques include: knitting, lace making, felting and braiding. The lo ngitudinal threads are called the ‘warp’ and the lateral threads are the ‘weft’ or ‘filling’ . (Weft, orwoof is an old English word meaning ‘that which is woven.’) Cloth is usually wo ven on a loom, a device that holds the warp threads in place while filling threads are woven through them. The way that these warp and filling threads interlace with each other is called ‘the weave’. The majority of woven products are created with one of three basic weaves: ‘plain weave’ (strong and hard-wearing, used for fashion and furn ishing fabrics, with a simple criss- cross pattern), ‘satin weave’ (which typically has a glossy surface and a dull back, characterized by four or more weft yarns floating o ver a warp yarn, or vice versa) and finally, ‘twill’ (a pattern of diagonal parallel ri bs - in contrast with a satin and plain weave).

Before the Industrial Revolution (1760-1840), weavi ng was a manual craft and wool was the principal staple. In the great wool distric ts a form of factory system was introduced, but in more rural areas weavers worked from home on a putting-out system. The wooden looms of that time were either ‘broad’ o r ‘narrow’; broad looms were those too wide for the weaver to pass the shuttle through the shed, necessitating employing an assistant (often an apprentice). This ceased to be necessary after John Kay invented the flying shuttle in 1733 however. The fl ying shuttle essentially involved a

box, at either end of the loom, which caught the sh uttle at the end of its journey, and propelled the shuttle on its return trip. This mass ively sped up the process of weaving, consequently resulting in a shortage of thread and a surplus of weaving capacity! The problem was largely solved with the opening of the Bridgewater Canal in June 1761, allowing cotton to be brought into Manchester, an a rea rich in fast flowing streams that could be used to power machinery.

Edmund Cartwright was the first to attempt to mecha nise weaving. He built a factory at Doncaster and obtained a series of patents betwe en 1785 and 1792. Cartwright later sold these to the Grimshaw brothers of Manchester, but their Knott Mill mysteriously burnt down the year afterwards. Whatever the proces s, woven ‘grey cloth’ - the end- product of weaving, was then sent to ‘finishers’, w here it was bleached, dyed and printed. Natural dyes were originally used, with sy nthetic dyes coming in the second half of the nineteenth century (the need for these chemicals was an important factor in the development of the chemical industry too). Up u ntil this point, all textiles were made from natural fibres; animal substances such as wool or silk, plant based materials such as cotton, flax or jute, and mineral sources, such as asbestos and glass fibres. In the twentieth century however, these were supplemented by artificial fibres made from petroleum.

Today, the textile industry is thriving, creating m any sub-industries — such as those purely devoted to colouring or patterning the woven material. Many famous fashion designers, such as Armani, Gianni Versace and Emili o Pucci have relied on textile designs to set their fashion collections apart; eas ily recognisable by their signature print driven designs. In properly printed fabrics the colour is bonded with the fibre, so as to resist washing and friction. This can be done by stencils, wood-blocks, engraved plates, rollers or silkscreens. Woodblock printing, still used in India and elsewhere today, is the oldest of these dating back to at lea st 220 CE in China. Most commonly however, textiles are dyed all over, with fabrics n ow available in almost every colour. Coloured designs can be created by simple printing, weaving together fibres of different colours (tartan or Uzbek Ikat), adding coloured sti tches to finished fabric (embroidery), creating patterns by resist dyeing methods, tying o ff areas of cloth and dyeing the rest (tie-dyeing), or drawing wax designs on cloth and d yeing in between them (batik).

Textiles have been a fundamental part of human life since the beginning of civilization. As has been evidenced, the methods an d materials used to make them have expanded enormously, but the function of fabri c itself has largely remained the same! The history of textile arts is also the histo ry of international trade, as silks were brought from China to India, Africa and Europe, whi lst Tyrian purple dye was an important trade good in the ancient Mediterranean. We hope this book inspires your own journey into textiles and weaving. Enjoy.

PREFACE

ONE of the first essential or desirable requirements i n the preparation and spinning of yarn, as well as in the subsequent operations of cl oth structure and weaving, is an adequate knowledge of the subject of Yarn Counts an d of Calculations relating thereto. In the absence of any simplified group of calculati ons for the principle of counting in regard to Raw Silk, Spun Silk, Artificial Silk, Cot ton, Woollen, Worsted, Linen, Hemp and Jute, or even of some unification of counting y arns from the same fibre in every district, it is a distinct advantage to be conversa nt with a multiplicity of systems. The present treatise, which appeared originally in serial form in theTextile Manufacturer under thenom de plume “THEMHIJA,” gives consideration to all the above-mentioned fibres, and to yarns made from them , by an elucidation of twenty-two different systems of counting yarns as practised in the various districts of the United Kingdom, on the Continent, and in America. The value of the work is that it not only provides the textile student of any branch with practically all that is required to prepare hi m for his examinations, but also acts as a reference book for spinners, manufacturers, and m erchants. THOMAS WOODHOUSE.

Dundee, 1921.

I.DEFINITIONS

CONTENTS

II.YARN TABLES: SYSTEMS OF COUNTING

III.CONVERSION OF COUNTS FROM ONE SYSTEM TO ANOTHER SYSTEM

IV.MULTIPLE-PLY YARNS: SHRINKAGE NEGLECTED

V.MULTIPLE-PLY YARNS: SHRINKAGE CONSIDERED

VI.THE PRICE OF TWISTED YARNS AND MIXTURES

VII.THE TURNS PER INCH OR TWIST OF YARNS

VIII.THE ANGLE OF TWIST

INDEX

CHAPTER I

DEFINITIONS

IN all the different branches of the textile industry it has been found necessary to adopt some method of numbering the different sizes of yar n; this invariable custom is practised partly in order that yarns of different t hicknesses may be distinguished from each other, and partly for the important and essential function of facilitating calculations when weight has to be taken into account in the pro cess of manufacture. Although there are many different methods or system s of indicating the number, size, grist, or count of yarn with respect to the relation between its length and its weight, all these systems are modifications of two distinct groups:

I. That in which a given length is constant for any particular system, and the weight of this length is variable. II. That in which the length is variable and the wei ght constant for any particular system.

The choice of the length in Group I. or the weight in Group II. is quite arbitrary, and, indeed, there are many variations in both groups. F or the sake of distinguishing between the two distinct groups we shall adopt the following definition:

Group I. = fixed-length systems. Group II. = fixed-weight systems.

In all the fixed-length systems the number or count of the yarn is directly proportional to the sectional area of the yarn; whe reas in the fixed-weight systems the number or count of the yarn is inversely proportion al to the sectional area of the yarn. In other words, we have

Fixed-length systems: the thicker the yarn, the hig her the count. Fixed-weight systems: the thicker the yarn, the low er the count.

This is the general definition, and although it is not advisable to illustrate the difference in general, an illustration of particular methods c onveys this difference quite clearly. Thus, when the unit length (not the fixed length) h appens to be the same in two systems, one of which, say jute, is in Group I., an d the other, say flax or linen, in Group II., the difference may be demonstrated graphically as inFig. 1. The particulars above and below the groups in this figure indicate clearly the relation between the yarns in the two systems. It must be un derstood that the two diagrams indicate only a few of the counts in each system. T hus the circles in the upper diagram —the fixed-length system—have diameters equal to 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 units respectively, and these numbers being the roots of perfect squares, it follows that the circles represent the sectional areas, and therefor e the counts, of Nos. 1, 4, 9, 16, 25, 36, 49, and 64. All intermediate counts have been o mitted for the sake of simplicity. In a similar manner the circles in the lower diagram r epresent yarns in the fixed-weight system, the diameters of which are also 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. The sectional areas of the latter are naturally proportionate to the diame ters, but it does not follow that the squares of these eight consecutive numbers represen t the counts; as a matter of fact they do not. This phase of the subject will be disc ussed at a later and more convenient stage.