Cotton Cards

[bizzilizzit]

I've been reading several Southern newspapers, and the shortage of Cotton Cards seems to be a large problem.
Can someone tell me in a concise manner, geared for one who can't tell the needle from the thread:
What are cotton cards?
What were their purpose?
Why were they so hard to get?
Weren't they reusable?
Thank you for any info that will help me understand the piracy and theiving of these cards!
Elizabeth Topping

[Virginia Mescher]

Re: Cotton Cards

I've been reading several Southern newspapers, and the shortage of Cotton Cards seems to be a large problem.
Can someone tell me in a concise manner, geared for one who can't tell the needle from the thread:
What are cotton cards?
What were their purpose?
Why were they so hard to get?
Weren't they reusable?
Thank you for any info that will help me understand the piracy and theiving of these cards!
Elizabeth Topping

Both cotton and wool has to be carded before it can be spun. The cards were used to straighten out the fibers, just as you brush your hair to get out the tangles. Imagine a long flat curry comb with very short, closely packed together hooked wire teeth and you have cotton or wool combs. The space between the teeth determine if they are cotton or wool cards and the number of the card or comb.

They were reusable but with constant use the wires would bend or pull out and decrease their effectiveness. Try brushing your hair with a brush with gaps in the bristles and you don't have a good result. They were difficult to replace because there were no factories in the south that producted the "card cloth." That was the leather backing where the wires were inserted. The cloth was attached to the wooden paddles. The paddles didn't wear out, unless they broke, but the wire-studded cloth did and had to be replaced.

During the war, the south did try to produce card cloth and cards but I don't know how successful they were.

[Spinster]

Re: Cotton Cards

Efforts were made to manufacture carding cloth domestically, with varying degrees of sucess, as well as turning wool cards to carding cotton, a task for which wool cards are only marginally suited.

Here is as much as one can comphrehend on the subject of hand cards, from the industrious and erudite Vicki Betts and her vast collection of transcribed southern newspapers:

http://www.uttyl.edu/vbetts/cards.htm

And this link should send you to a vendor of hand cards, and replacement card cloth. They haven't changed much in the intervening years.

http://www.woolworks.com/Catalogs/SpinnersCatalog06/p15.pdf

[bizzilizzit]

Re: Cotton Cards

WOW! I didn't know you could still buy "new" cards!
Thank you, Ladies, for the info. I helps me better understand points I find when I'm researching if I know what/why the item was needed and a visual goes a long way!
Elizabeth Topping

[Spinster]

Re: Cotton Cards

Hee hee--if one is still doing things the old way, then one still needs new 'old' things.:D

And, if one messes around and leaves said cards outside the fiber basket on the ground, and subsequently steps on them barefooted in the dark of night----well, the words uttered have not changed considerably from the ones the Soldiers Would Not Say

[Hargis, G. 5 A-1]

Re: Cotton Cards

And, if one messes around and leaves said cards outside the fiber basket on the ground, and subsequently steps on them barefooted in the dark of night----well, the words uttered have not changed considerably from the ones the Soldiers Would Not Say

This doubtless falls under "taking great pains with ones impression."

[sauguszouave]

Re: Cotton Cards

Here's a website for another company that shows small carding machings; both wool and cotton:

http://www.woolery.com/Pages/fiberprepfr.html

this one out of Murfreesboro, North Carolina.

By the way, note that combs and cards are different things. They align the fibers differently and result in a different feel to the yarn.

Regards,

Paul Kenworthy

[sauguszouave]

Re: Cotton Cards

Here are two links to museum websites that have ante-bellum powered carding machines in their collections. Water-powered carding machines were invented in the late 1700s. Steam engines were used to drive the overhead shafting starting in the 1830s. Machines like these continued in use with electric motors running the shafting in a few mills into the 1960s.

http://www.wrenscottage.com/gvm/craft/carding.php is at the Greenfield Museum in Michigan.

http://www.athm.org/tools_machinery.htm is in the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Regards,

Paul Kenworthy

[Spinster]

Re: Cotton Cards

The simplicity of hand cards serves to underline the lack of basic manufacturing capacity in the American South.

The plea for them was constant in newspapers and letters to politicians, at the same time those papers and politicians were exhorting the women of the South to produce as much homespun as possible to aid in the war effort.

The basic rule of thumb for home fiber production remains the same:

It takes seven hand spinners to keep one hand weaver occupied.
It takes seven hand carders to keep one hand spinner occupied

And that simple equation also underlines the dire need for a simple tool.