page_title: Carding
section_title: Hand carders
hierarchical_section_title: Carding / Hand carding / Hand carders
caption_attribution_description: English: Blanket making in Haikou, Hainan, People's Republic of China. Machine for carding cotton. It is powered by a small petrol motor. This machine gives the cotton maximum volume, and removes clumps, giving it an even consistency.
context_page_description: Carding is a mechanical process that disentangles, cleans and intermixes fibres to produce a continuous web or sliver suitable for subsequent processing. This is achieved by passing the fibres between differentially moving surfaces covered with card clothing. It breaks up locks and unorganised clumps of fibre and then aligns the individual fibres to be parallel with each other. In preparing wool fibre for spinning, carding is the step that comes after teasing.
  The word is derived from the Latin carduus meaning thistle or teasel, as dried vegetable teasels were first used to comb the raw wool.
context_section_description: Hand cards are typically square or rectangular paddles manufactured in a variety of sizes from 2 by 2 inches (5.1 cm × 5.1 cm) to 4 by 8 inches (10 cm × 20 cm). The working face of each paddle can be flat or cylindrically curved and wears the card cloth. Small cards, called flick cards, are used to flick the ends of a lock of fibre, or to tease out some strands for spinning off.
  A pair of cards is used to brush the wool between them until the fibres are more or less aligned in the same direction. The aligned fibre is then peeled from the card as a rolag. Carding is an activity normally done outside or over a drop cloth, depending on the wool's cleanliness. Rolag is peeled from the card. 
  This product (rovings, rolags, and batts) can be used for spinning.
  Carding of wool can either be done "in the grease" or not, depending on the type of machine and on the spinner's preference. "In the grease" means that the lanolin that naturally comes with the wool has not been washed out, leaving the wool with a slightly greasy feel. The large drum carders do not tend to get along well with lanolin, so most commercial worsted and woollen mills wash the wool before carding. Hand carders (and small drum carders too, though the directions may not recommend it) can be used to card lanolin rich wool.
caption: A carding machine in Haikou, Hainan Province, China.
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