23 Aug Linen, Machines, and More
We have just started blogging! You can follow the TapRoot Fibre Lab journey- going from seed to sow.
Here are some updates from past communications to start our blog!
The ladies at the Mill in Greenwich have been clearing out some of the many test products that Rhea has been making over the past year and gearing up to create our new blends and lines of pure linen that we want to make a standard available product for our customers. Rhea is shown here with six bobbins of 50% wool and 50% North Country Cheviot wool from one of our local farmers.
The mill has taken in around 600 lbs of wool from local farmers, and are trying to find more with whole flocks of one or two pure breeds. Our preferred down breed is North Country because it has a nice consistent color and length. We are also very interested in all wool breed sheep and would welcome any inquires.
The mechanical team of Ari & Mike have been continuing their work on the development of our long line linen processing machines. We are so fortunate to have Monique and Sydney working with us. They have been testing the machines each day keeping track of through put, quality and machine performance.
We are working on a redesign of the clamp to increase processing time per lb through all of the machines. The breaker, scutcher and hackler are working well and we are feeling very close to beginning the marketing and sales of these machines to the rest of the world. We are working on our CE accreditation and our CSA accreditation for the machines.
The intersector and the wet long line spinning design process is currently on pause until we fully complete the work above. We have a prototype of the intersector that we have been testing. We have wooden rollers arriving as we hope the addition of wooden rollers to the design will significantly improve the quality of the sliver which we have not been happy with yet. The adventure continues!
We have both nettles and retted hemp to test in our machine line. The machines have been designed for long line linen production however, the by products of the process is unprocessed straw that falls out or that breaks and waste from under the scutcher and the hackler. We are collecting all of this waste and are processing it into tow roving and yarn 100% and blends while we wait for the long line spinning to be complete.