Talk:Wool

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Superwash wool yarn

Could we add something about superwash wool? As I understand it there are two methods which result in a wool which won't shrink or felt. Also, we should add the pros and cons of superwash wool. KannD86 (talk) 18:37, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I have the same question. What is the process to create washable wool? Kingturtle (talk) 02:33, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Cgoodwin. Thanks! Kingturtle (talk) 04:16, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I should have included it earlier. Cgoodwin (talk) 04:52, 10 November 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Picture?

That picture of the sheep is overlapping some words.(This unsigned comment left at 17:13, 19 January 2006 by 147.222.188.230)

Flocculent

sorry to jump in to your comments here my computer seems to be in charge. my question i looked up flocculent??? wool??? (This unsigned comment left at 21:15, 20 January 2006 by 24.17.78.245)

This is what used to be at the flocculent page before it was changed to point here: flocculent is an adjective describing something appearing fluffy or woolly. Compare flocculant. --Ali@gwc.org.uk 23:10, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was researching flocculents yesterday and instead of going to a page on them at Wikipedia my entry of "flocculent" redirected me to wool. The redirect for "flocculent" should be to the Wikipedia page on Flocculation here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flocculation, rather than wool, the above adjectival relation notwithstanding. A link at the latter to the former would suffice. I do not know how to do/undo redirects. Who can correct this and/or offer advice on how-to. Thank you. Wikiuser100 (talk) 12:30, 28 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Fire resistance?

Unlike synthetic fibers, is wool fire resistant/retartant? (This unsigned comment left at 15:55, 28 January 2006 by 216.254.113.62)

Not significantly afaik; its chief advantage in fires (which it shares with other natural fibres) is that it will burn cleanly rather than melting onto skin, seats, etc. Incidentally, please type ~~~~ at the end of your posts to sign them. /blahedo (t) 21:13, 29 January 2006 (UTC)[reply]

According to the wool scientists, wool is harder to ignite than all untreated sysnthetic fibres used in equivalent products (higher ignition temperature); it has lower rate of flame spread; low heat release and low heat of combustion; doesn't melt or drip; forms a char which is insulating and self-extinguishes; and contributes less to toxic gases and smoke than other flooring products when used in carpets. Wool carpets are specified for high safety environments such as trains and aircraft. Wool is often specified for fire-fighter garments. PeterBaxter 08:27, 4 October 2006 (UTC) Wearability of wool near heat is the topic I believe the average reader would need to know. It is worn for cold weather. The article does not mention its PRIMARY use. And I have not seen it used as a flame retardant. This is not an article about random facts about wool. This should be what an average person should know. Wear wool for a fire and what will you wear in COLD WEATHER? COLD WEATHER calls for a warm product. WOOL IS NOT HYPO ALLERGENIC. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.102.171.99 (talk) 02:27, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Virgin wool/new wool?

Hoping that someone might be able to add some content that explains what Virgin Wool is. Thanks. --Sferrier 19:04, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It is wool not used before; wool not processed or woven before. Eagle 20:33, Apr 9, 2005 (UTC)
Most british wool isnt virgin wool... incidently most british wool comes from Wales :D Wolfmankurd 19:53, 30 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Garments can be pulled apart and the wool reused; such wool is not virgin wool; recycled wool however is a small part of the industry.Charles Esson 04:42, 28 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Is virgin wool a synonym for new wool? I've been buying yarn marked "pure new wool" from the UK for ages and never known what that meant. PoetrixViridis 02:38, 16 November 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Virgin wool is a wool that has not previously been used in manufacture. Virgin wool is wool which has not been used before by anyone other than the sheep. It's sheared, cleaned, spun, and turned into the garment you have before you without ever having been another garment or fabric. The idea of recycled wool in one's clothing is alien to many these days. These days clothing is cheap and raw materials plentiful. If you walk into a department store and look at a selection of sweaters in a rainbow array of colors, chances are very few will be labeled "virgin wool" but at the same time not one will have a single recycled fiber in it. It wasn't always so, however. [see http://everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1772730]

"A bale of raw wool, or grease wool, straight fromt he sheep, can contain as little as 50 percent wool, the rest being wool grease, burs, seeds, and other vegetable matter, body salts, and dirt". In Wool, Fabric of History - National Geographic, May 1988. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.180.109.105 (talk) 14:01, 29 December 2007 (UTC) My understanding of the term virgin with wool is how many times it is combed or carded. If it is combed many times, it is a softer babylike, if you will, product. That is where the term comes from. Virgin used with olive oil is how many times it has been filtered. First run and original is used with new manufacture on other products. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.102.171.99 (talk) 02:36, 5 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Redirect?

Why does Fleece redirect here? _→AzaToth 21:36, 2 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Answer #1: Because it's just a name for unprocessed wool, so it doesn't deserve its own article.

Answer #2: Oh, unless you mean the synthetic material. :) I've changed it from a redirect to a dab. If there's yet another kind of fleece you were looking for, feel free to add it over there. /blahedo (t) 02:08, 3 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Reverted Page

Someone changed the second paragraph maliciously, (changed wool to drool, inserted the word 'gay' a couple of times) so I changed it back to whatever it was right before that. I also put a brief definition of 'virgin wool' in the 'Uses' section. Cicatrix 04:03, 6 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Systemic bias

I'm adding a systemic bias tag to this article, as it is clearly centered on the western tradition of a global concept. An article about wool should be about wool in general, providing an overview of sheep and goat wool and also alpaca wool, and derivative concepts like steel wool, and refer to the relevant main articles. Most of the current content should be moved to sheep wool. -Ahruman 09:51, 10 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Ahruman, this article *is* about sheep wool. There is a statement in the first paragraph to that effect:

"This article deals with the wool produced from domestic sheep."

And there is an {{otheruses}} tag included up the top also. I don't think it is an exclusively Western concept that "Wool" refers to sheep wool first. In English anyway it does. And for alpaca wool and steel wool, etc there are separate articles. Most people think of wool as sheep wool first. I think sheep wool being by far the most common sort of wool shuold stay in this article here. And discussion about other sorts of wool should go elsewhere. What do you think?

I changed the above sentence to say "explicitly" just to make it clearer and also added another sentence with links to the other fibres that use "wool" in their name or other animal furs called wool. I also removed the tag you put on. If your argument is that this article deals with sheep wool from a Western-only viewpoint then feel free to put it back. Thanks for raising all the same — Донама 02:20, 14 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Production question

Why are details given about sheep flocks in the US when it produces just .77% of the global wool clip? It would be alright to leave the details about the US, but only if details are also given about countries that have significant levels of production, eg China and New Zealand. --Colourblind 04:29, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Because there are more English Wikipedia editors in the US than anywhere else. To bring back a balance I agree with you -- attention needs to be paid to add information about sheep husbandry outside the US. — Donama 04:50, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

If you have such information, write it in.PrometheusX303 07:03, 5 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wool contains Carbon Dioxide?

Maybe I just don't know wool science but the statement that wool contains carbon dioxide seems suspect such CO2 is a gas. I did some google searchs and found nothing about this. If this is is true it needs more explanation and a source (I was unable to find anything about it after a short google search) -- 67.101.146.57 20:00, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Glass fleeces is also a term to be included here. It can be used for immobilization of biomolecules

Wool does not contain Carbon Dioxide but it is a sink for carbon dioxide and glass fleece is based on glass fibers not on wool. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.180.109.105 (talk) 13:23, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

11/06 Overhaul

I've been making some pretty heavy changes to this page. I pretty much overhauled the references section, since there were, I think, three cited sources, and they were not cited consistently or in keeping with current standards. I did try to keep & update the sources that were there, but it was patchy guesswork in some instances, so please contribute if you have any insights on them.

As for new sections, I haven't even looked at the history or uses parts. I was in the middle of making a stub section on common breeds, but my browser ate it, and I don't know too much about breeds, other than they exist, so I was having trouble paring down the huge lists I found as sources into summaries anyway. I also found a better source (http://www.textilelinks.com/author/rb/971021.html) for the quality section than the somewhat scattered stuff that is there now - I'll try to integrate/re-do it when I have time.

Hopefully nobody takes offense at anything I've done I'm not much of an expert in this area, and appreciate any feedback you have in making this page better.

--Spyforthemoon 22:14, 10 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

This http://www.montana.edu/wwwpb/pubs/mt8380ag.pdf looks to be a good source to for grading information. Will do myself when I get time, or feel free to take initiative.--Spyforthemoon 16:45, 18 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Fleece to yarn statistics

I have been researching the manufacturing process for wool and have been trying the answer the question "how many jumpers does a sheep produce per year".

Statistically on average sheep produce 8lb of fleece per anum. This site has been very informative about how wool is converted and the manufacturing process but it doesn't have any data on weight loss/gain between the two.

Spelling.

I am not the one who is trying to change the spelling. I am simply keeping others from changing its established and orginal spelling per WP:ENGVAR. I also corrected a few inconsistent spellings per WP:ENGVAR. --VMS Mosaic 22:21, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Strange that your corrections are always to the American version. Looks like bias

If you check my change history, you will find articles where I changed to the British spelling. I make the changes based strictly on WP:ENGVAR. Looks can be deceiving. --VMS Mosaic 22:35, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Have done. Thats why I said it looks like bias.

Please see Red Cabbage for a change I made to British. --VMS Mosaic 22:44, 24 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Merge?

I suggest that virgin wool should be merged into this article - there's almost do information there, and what is there makes no sense. - PKM 03:58, 3 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The sentence there makes no sense- wool spun on the shoddy? Based on the linked definition, shoddy is reused wool or fabric, and one wouldn't spin on that. Also, the link for 'spun' is bad. I think the article is not worth saving- maybe make it redirect here? Loggie 03:04, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I second the motion to move the Virgin wool article into the Wool article. --BlindEagle^{talk~contribs} 12:55, 4 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Done. - PKM 16:31, 9 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Notes

"Long and short hair wool at the South Central Family Farm Research Center in Boonesville, Arizona". The caption is wrong, In the industry the samples would be called hair and wool. The hair sample has no value. The difference in the shown samples is micron. Really is a poor photo and should go. Perhaps a photo of a carpet wool fleece and a merino fleece. That would be interesting.

2nd statement in introduction is wrong, sheep wool has the overlapping scales, cashmere doesn't. Carpet wool and alpaca even less so. Perhaps some pictures of the fibres under the microscope.

Charles Esson 14:51, 23 June 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Introduction

This sentence bothers me: "It's kind of an itchy substance, and also pretty hot, too." While I agree that it would be useful information to include in the introduction, I think it could be said in a more encyclopedia-like and objective way. I suggest "Wool fibers are commonly used in winter clothing, as they are not a good conductor of heat. A downside to this, however, is the common itchiness that wearers of wool clothing experience." I don't know wether that loses some clarity, however. If anyone can improve that sentence, it would be greatly appreciated by all. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Miggyb (talk • contribs).

I removed the poorly worded sentence and added a fact tag for the last paragraph. --BlindEagle^{talk~contribs} 15:52, 22 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hair of all camelides can be used: guanacos (albeit rare) and llamas too. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 212.149.48.42 (talk) 13:56, 17 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Perhaps there could be clearer distinction between sheep breeds and "fine animal hairs" given the growing issues with fraud and need for consumer protection. <http://www.cashmere.org/cm/fraud.php> US Customs and Border Protection Laboratory (CBPL) Methods chapter 51 <http://www.cbp.gov/xp/cgov/trade/automated/labs_scientific_svcs/technical_documents/lab_methods/chap_51.xml> indicates the distinction between fibers: 51-07 "Wool or Mohair"; 51-18 "Analysis of Wool, Fine or Coarse Animal Hair; Horsehair Yarn, and Woven Fabric". Substantial confusion on the issue may be minimized by providing a summary of the following with associated fact tags... "Specialty wool fibers" under the "Wool Names" section in the Wool Act states,"Although the specialty fibers listed above may be called simply wool, they also may be identified by their specialty fiber names: mohair, Cashmere, camel, alpaca, llama, vicuna. If the name of a specialty fiber is used, the percentage of that fiber must appear on the label." <http://ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/textile/bus21.shtml#woolnames> The Federal Trade Commission indicates,"There is a three percent tolerance for fiber content claims on labels... No tolerance is allowed if the label states that a product contains one fiber (exclusive of allowed amounts of ornamentation or decorative trim)... The Wool Act and Rules do not provide any tolerance for the content of wool products." <http://ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/textile/bus21.shtml#tolerance> (4DEdu (talk) 06:51, 20 February 2011 (UTC))[reply]

A woollen rug has protected a horse from severe burns when his trailer caught alight

This sort of statement is not a proper entry for an encyclopedia, specially because there are no references to such a fact. Even if properly referenced, such a statement does not belong to an encyclopedia. Please remove it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.180.109.105 (talk) 14:09, 29 December 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Removed along with most of that section Geoff Plourde (talk) 04:39, 6 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

There was a very amazing photo of this horse that saved from severe burns on the area covered by his woollen rug. The uncovered area and his trailer mate (rugged with a rug made from another fibre) were badly burned. Unfortunatley I did not keep a copy of the article which appeared in a Sydney Saddlery Catalogue. The "Firies" are kitted out in woollen garments for this reason as well as many others that may happen to be caught in a fire. Cgoodwin (talk) 10:10, 8 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Why did someone delete my addition?

Why did someone delete my addition? I found that out in the vatican library. Please apoligise. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.144.54.105 (talk) 19:10, 9 March 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Spelling

As per "Strong national ties to a topic". "An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation uses the appropriate variety of English for that nation" and this case nations!Cgoodwin (talk) 05:54, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but that is not the way WP:ENGVAR works. Wool did not originate in either AU or NZ. Your claim does not even come close to meeting the "strong ties" requirement. VMS Mosaic (talk) 08:18, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

The US supplies LESS than 1% of the world's woool and this is surely does not meet a "strong ties" requirement. Other Eng speaking countries supply about 38% of the world's wool. I dispute your comment that the world at large simply does not associate wool strongly with any particular nation(s). In this regard Australia distinctly leads in both quality and volume. Cgoodwin (talk) 21:50, 13 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

First, I did not claim that the article has "strong ties" to any nation (e.g. the US). I am claiming that it doesn't have "strong ties" to any nation. My edit which started this issue is based on the "Retaining the existing variety" section of WP:ENGVAR. The article has been on my watch list since 2007, but I did not catch the newest non-consistent spellings until now because I have been down with back problems since October and am still recovering from back surgery, otherwise I would have fixed the spellings within a day or two. I did not just come across the article and decide that it should have some particular dialect; instead I simply did what was needed to maintain its existing dialect.

Secondly, you are missing the point of the "Strong national ties to a topic" section of WP:ENGVAR:

An article on a topic that has strong ties to a particular English-speaking nation uses the appropriate variety of English for that nation. For example:

    * Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings (British English)
    * American Civil War (American English)
    * Institutions of the European Union (British or Irish English)
    * Australian Defence Force (Australian English)
    * Vancouver, B.C. (Canadian English)

In all of the examples, the articles are very clearly (aka strongly) nation(s) specific. Examples of wool articles which would be "strongly" nation specific:

    * Australian wool production
    * Association of Australian wool producers
    * Australian wool standards

WP:ENGVAR is not intended to be used simply as an excuse to change the spelling dialect of an article to an editor's preferred dialect. The section you are attempting to apply is only meant to be used in cases that would be indisputable to an objective observer. This article has been here seven years without anyone else claiming it is nation specific. When I made my first edit to it in 2007, Australia and New Zealand were barely mentioned except for in the section on production.

If you want, we can ask for a third opinion on whether wool is nation specific. VMS Mosaic (talk) 05:25, 14 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I would appreciate a third opinion. I'm sure that you will be able to find to someone agree with you, probably ignoring the fact that ANZ did not have the advantage of the early web connections that the US had. Cgoodwin (talk) 04:55, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, I'm your third opinion. I'd tend to agree that wool is not tied to any nation or language area, even though a lot of it is produced in AU+NZ. That hasn't always been true however, and it won't always be true. According to sheep they originated in mesopotamia. Anyway, long story short, I don't see any significant country tie here, so I think the MoS says the spelling that was first used in the article should be used? --fvw * 07:08, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, just thought I would give a comment on this as well since I saw this on the request page for third opinions. I agree that there is no strong tie to a particular nation. Due to the historical and current use of wool virtually worldwide, saying it is a nation-specific topic in general would not be following the guidelines of WP:ENGVAR. This is not like an article about a British king, or a city in the United States, it is a product which is wide ranging across many nations. Just because production of wool is currently concentrated in certain countries does not make the entire general topic specific to those countries. For that reason, according to the MoS, the original version of English used should stand. Theseeker4 (talk) 18:16, 15 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Stretch

That entire ph sounded like an ad for wool. Recovers its shape? Streches more than any synthetic fiber? Nonsense. The first ref I pulled up says that Spandex streches 600% and recovers its shape [1] - that's 3x the claim made for wool. Deleted because even a fact tag wasn't going to save this ph. Bob98133 (talk) 17:57, 26 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Static Resistant? Or Not?

I need to know if wool collects static electricity for a knitting project. This article says that wool does NOT collect static electricity. After doing some research on the web, I have found contradictory information. At [2] it says that wool has the capacity to develop high positive electrostatic charges. In the wikipedia article it specifically mentions that wool carpet is less likely to create a static shock. The electrostatics.net site specifically mentions wools carpets as being more likely to create static shock. Now I am not sure which reference is correct. Can someone please clarify if wool truly does resist static or is inclined to create a positive static charge? If it does indeed have a high positive charge, then I believe the article should be changed. Thanks! Bgirl029 (talk) 18:33, 29 October 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Marketing adjustment

I just updated the wool marketing australia section to include electronic trading and adjust the private treaty number sales % which is incorrect. I will put in the sources for the stats shortly. Someone should beef up the direct to mill section too. Tony Benson (talk) 05:10, 5 Jan 2010 (UTC)

ELs to be removed

These two ELs serve little purpose and provide little info. They should be removed. Posted per request in article to discuss prior to removal or addition of ELs.

Bob98133 (talk) 14:48, 27 July 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Title?

Perhaps this article should be renamed Wool (sheep) to avoid confusion with the many other forms of wool which have nothing to do with the commonest form of wool. Some of these include supposed other animal wools, steel wool, bronze wool, cotton wool, mineral wool and so on. Thoughts? Cgoodwin (talk) 02:11, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

A user looking for "wool" is most likely to be looking for sheep's wool; per Wikipedia:PRIMARYTOPIC Wool is the correct title for this article. - PKM (talk) 03:51, 31 December 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Scales?

The article doesn't really explain what is meant when it says wool has scales, and talks about scaling. Mohair says "While it has scales like wool, the scales are not fully developed, merely indicated.[2] Thus, mohair does not felt as wool does." What does that mean? Felt doesn't really explain that either. So really all three articles could use some work to make that more clear. Rifter0x0000 (talk) 03:11, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

An uncommon property of wool fibers is that they have microscopic barbs running along the length. Mechanical agitation such as hammering or agitating in a washing machine causes the barbs to link together, similar to Velcro. Thus the felting is an irreversible and it causes shrinkage in all directions. Any mention of "thickening" in this article is suspect. I am familiar with this property of wool because it was used to make the press felts for paper machines. These are the fabrics that transported the wet paper web through the press rolls and onto which the expressed water was absorbed. I added a statement about this under the characteristics section, but no longer have the reference because wool for paper machine felts was replaced by synthetics decades ago. Perhaps someone in the industry can supply a reference. [User:Phmoreno|Phmoreno]] (talk) 02:51, 3 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Hypoallergenic?

If wool is hypoallergenic, then why does it cause hives, which are usually allergic reactions? Is there another mechanism involved, and if so, could the article discuss this? 173.66.211.53 (talk) 19:29, 12 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I wondered about that too. I am violently allergic to it. Can't offer documentation to that effect, however. :P — Preceding unsigned comment added by 167.187.100.202 (talk) 01:47, 10 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

History

In the third paragraph in the section "History", there is a sentence that begins, "Both pre-industries". It is not completely clear to what, exactly, this refers. Three areas of production are mentioned earlier in this same paragraph: the Champagne Fairs and nearby production in places like Provins, production in the Low Countries, and production in central Italy. Something needs to be added to make it clear which pre-industries are meant by "Both pre-industries". Perhaps someone who knows the history could clarify this. – CorinneSD (talk) 17:40, 21 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Carbon footprint

I'm just wondering whether a section for "Carbon footprint" is necessary. I don't recall seeing this type of section in articles on other materials. The information just added to this article is encyclopedic. Perhaps it could be added to another existing section. CorinneSD (talk) 01:39, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree. Many things have carbon footprints, but I don't think it would be appropriate to add a similar section to the articles for every manufactured item. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 01:42, 5 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]

incomplete

You're not ready to use the wool when you have scoured it. You still have to comb, card, spin, dye, maybe some other things. They need to be discussed in this article in the order they have to be done. 108.18.136.147 (talk) 21:44, 9 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]