Chapter 156: Yarn (Please vote and subscribe)
"I weave cloth. I'm much better at weaving than you. I can weave very long cloth, and the cloth I weave is wider than yours. Moreover, I don't twist the thread with my hands. I'm much faster than you."
Luo Chong boasted to Xiaodie with a smile, and his mind couldn't help but recall the scene of his first visit to the weaving tribe. At that time, Luo Chong saw with his own eyes how the women of the weaving tribe weaved linen cloth under the straw shed. Tsk tsk, it was so primitive, so primitive that there was no edge.
The women of the weaving tribe tied the fixed length of linen thread to two wooden sticks, and then nailed the wooden sticks directly to the ground to tighten them as the warp, and then used a bone needle made of bone to thread the weft. The women squatted on the ground and picked up the warp threads one by one with the bone needle. After threading a weft thread, they inserted their fingers into the warp thread to tighten the weft thread, and then started to pick up the next weft thread.
Oh my god, it was so primitive. It took half a month to weave a piece of linen with holes, which could tire people to death. The quality was also poor and there were many shortcomings.
The most obvious points are, first, the width of the linen is very narrow, because if it is too wide, the workload will be too large. After all, they still pick up the warp threads one by one, and the distance between a person's two hands is limited, so you can imagine how wide they can weave.
Another thing is that the length of the cloth is fixed. Their warp threads are of fixed length, unlike the reel loom, which weaves a certain length and then rolls it up to continue weaving, while their warp threads are only that long.
The third is to use fingers to comb the weft threads tightly. That's fingers. Just imagine how tight it can be combed. You can see it from the finished product. It's like a sieve, full of big holes and small eyes. It doesn't look like a piece of cloth at all. Haha, but you can't discriminate against them. After all, this is the ancestor of the textile industry.
"You're lying. Am taught me to twist the yarn with my hands. What else can I use if not my hands? Can it turn into yarn by itself?" Xiaodie beat Luo Chong in disbelief.
"Of course it won't turn into yarn by itself, but you really don't need to rub it with your hands. Anyway, it's much faster than rubbing it with your hands. Really, but you need to use a tool to twist the yarn. I'll make it for you when I come back and you'll know. I'll take you to wash the alpaca wool first."
Xiaodie still didn't believe that you can twist the yarn without using your hands, but he already knew that Luo Chong was good at making tools, so he half believed it again. He wanted to ask a few more questions, but was directly taken away by Luo Chong to wash the alpaca wool.
Several large baskets of dark brown alpaca wool were placed in the cave and were moved out by Luo Chong.
Washing wool is mainly to remove dust on the wool. There will be no things like grass seeds and gravel, because the alpacas in the Han tribe are all raised in clean animal pens. They have no chance to forage everywhere. They eat hay. Since this is the case, it's easy to deal with. Just wash it directly.
Bring a few large wooden buckets, carry the soap produced when making glycerin, and then load it onto a flatbed cart pulled by an ox. Choose a place to wash alpaca wool next to the well in the city. The wastewater produced can be directly poured on the main road in the city to slowly infiltrate. Anyway, there is no planting here and it will not pollute the environment.
Put the cut alpaca wool into the large wooden barrel, add water, and then dig a piece of soap and put it in, and use a wooden stick to pound it back and forth.
"What is this, why are there bubbles?" Xiaodie pounded the alpaca wool with a wooden stick, watching Luo Chong put a piece of soap dug out from the water tank into it, and soon a lot of bubbles floated in the water, so she asked in confusion.
"This thing is called soap. It can not only wash the dust in the wool, but also dissolve the grease on it into the water. After washing, wash it several times with clean water and it will be clean." Luo Chong explained while helping to pound the alpaca wool.
There were several large wooden barrels in a row. Xiaodie was stirring the water inside with a wooden stick, and Luo Chong was helping to draw water from the well with a wooden barrel. The young couple was busy and having a lot of fun.
Take the alpaca wool out of the soapy water and wring it dry, then put it into the next large wooden barrel and continue to stir it. After four washes, the remaining water is very clean. Just wring it dry and put it in a clean large barrel and wait for a place to dry.
The washed alpaca wool has turned into coffee color, which is lighter than the previous brown, but it saves dyeing. You can't dye this coffee color into red, blue, or green, unless you use paint. Of course, in this case, you can still dye it black. Anyway, colors lighter than the original color can't be dyed, unless the original color is white. Unfortunately, the dozens of alpacas in the Han tribe are all dark brown.
After washing several large baskets of alpaca wool, it was already evening. While there was still light, Luo Chong and Xiaodie used wooden sticks to stick into the ground to tie a few clotheslines, hung all the alpaca wool on them, and then roughly wrapped a few circles with thin ropes to prevent it from being blown to the ground by the wind.
The two of them were tired and sat on the grass to rest. They looked at the clothesline swaying in the wind, and the brown alpaca wool was still tangled together.
"Luo Chong, is there really a tool that does not require hands to twist the thread? What does it look like? Why haven't I seen it in our tribe? Don't the women in our tribe also twist the thread with their hands?" Xiao Die asked lazily, resting her head on Luo Chong's shoulder.
"Of course there is, but it hasn't been made yet. It's still in my mind. That tool is called a spinning machine. Well, it's a big wheel with a small wheel. When you step on it with your foot, the big wheel will turn in a circle, and then it will turn the small wheel faster.
You put the wool strips on the small wheel, and the small wheel will twist the wool strips into thread by itself, and then roll them together to form a big spool. In this way, you can twist out very long threads. You can weave as long cloth as you want." Luo Chong said while gesturing.
"Really? Then make that spinning machine quickly. I want to see it. By the way, do you need tools to weave cloth? We weave cloth on the ground while squatting. How do you weave?"
"Well, I do have tools. It's a loom. I can tie very long threads on it, and the cloth I weave can be very long. And I don't have to pick them one by one with bones like you do. I can step on my loom with my feet, and the vertical warp threads can automatically separate into two layers."
Luo Chong stroked Xiaodie's long hair while staring at the clothesline not far away. He recalled the looms in the history textbooks he had seen in his previous life.
The earliest thing in the world that can be called a machine, except for the crossbow on the crossbow, the most sophisticated and complex machine is the textile machine.
From the waist loom tied to the waist and pedaled with feet in the Xia and Shang dynasties to the oblique warp scroll frame loom in the Han Dynasty, the loom model for the next few thousand years was basically determined from then on.
Later, in the Song Dynasty, the clever ancestors of the Han nationality invented a two-story high CNC coding loom that could be operated by several people at the same time. It was specially used to weave silk and Shu brocade. It was the highest wisdom of ancient humans. It could weave the set pattern directly on the cloth through the coding composed of drilled wood pieces. It was the world's leading black technology. It was awesome.
Later, it developed into the era of the Industrial Revolution. The Jenny spinning machine and the flying shuttle loom truly changed the fate of the world. The textile industry also became the world's first industry to use steam power.
(End of this chapter)
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