BANCROFT SHED (3)

[Stanley]

BANCROFT SHED (3)

23 March 2001

Last week we’d got our cloth order, decided on the construction of the cloth and now we have to actually get down to making it.
The first stage in making cloth is to prepare the weaver’s beams, these are the large bobbins of warp thread that are fitted into the loom. The first stage of making these is the taping department. There are several names for the process of warp-sizing, the most common are ‘taping’ or ‘slashing’. Call it what you will the process is the same. Large 'taper's beams' of warp thread are delivered to the mill and installed in the back of the taping machine. Suppose the cloth construction calls for 3,000 warp ends in each weaver's beam. The tapers beams will be a set of ten beams, each with 300 ends and enough length to make say ten weaver's beams. All these ends are fed through the taping machine in such a way that they are first immersed in a ‘sow box’ containing a boiling mixture of water, flour, tallow and gum, the actual constituents vary from mill to mill and sometimes even for different cloths.
From the sow box the sheet of yarn passes through two squeeze rollers to remove excess size and round two very large copper drums which are heated by live steam. These drums are highly polished and the yarn will dry on them without sticking if they are properly looked after. When they come off the last drum, the threads are stuck together in a solid sheet (a tape) and have to be split down into separate threads by a number of rods inserted through the web in such a way that as the sheet passes over them the threads separate. At the front of the machine these warp threads are wound on to the weavers beam and a complicated set of gears measures the thread as it passes through the machine and marks the warp with blue ink at the end of every cut length. When the weaver sees this blue 'cut mark' come through the loom she or he knows it is time to stop and get the tackler or cloth carrier to come and cut the piece out and set the loom up again for weaving. In some poorly-manned sheds like Bancroft the weavers were quite capable of cutting their own pieces out.
Once the weaver’s beam has the required number of ‘cut lengths’ wound on to it the taper slows the machine right down, inserts a striking comb to keep the ends straight and cuts the warp out and removes it. He replaces it with an empty beam, starts the winding process off and then puts the tape back on to full speed.
The weavers beam is now full of warp yarn which has been soaked with size and dried and is ready to go to the next stage in the process which is the warp preparation department. Before it goes, let’s ask a question; why size the yarn in the first place? In the old days when cloth was sold by weight, one of the reasons for sizing the yarn was to get a lot of china clay incorporated in the yarn. This was called ‘sizing for weight’. The buyers of the finished cloth attached great value to weight and so the manufacturers gave them what they wanted. A skilled taper using the right mix of size could double the weight of a piece of cloth. Modern sizing had a different purpose. As the warp yarn goes through the weaving process it tends to shed loose fibres and these can clog up in the reeds and healds and cause warp thread breakages which leads to faults in the cloth. If the yarn is sized it makes it stronger and less likely to ‘pen up’ and break in the loom.
One tape machine or slasher can deal with the warps for 400 looms. Bancroft was built for 1250 looms and had three machines but in the 70’s when I was there we were running fewer looms and just had two machines. The tapers were Norman Grey and Joe Nutter and they could make all the warps needed for the looms we were running without working any overtime.
Our warp is now ready for the next stage. Before it can be ‘gaited’ into the loom by the tackler it has to have its healds and reed fitted to it with the correct ends in the correct order threaded through the correct reed dents and heald eyes. If the cloth is a type that has been woven before, it can be knotted onto the threads already arranged in the healds and reed cut off an old warp. This is done using the Barber Coleman automatic warp knotting machine. If it is a new sort each end has to be ‘drawn in’ individually by hand. Jim Pollard used to do the drawing at Bancroft in addition to his job as weaving manager. A top class man can do about 12,000 ends a day. I’ve seen Jim do almost 20,000 when pushed if he did some overtime, I always reckoned he was the Cassius Clay of loomers!
Once the healds and reed were fitted, the warp was ready for the tackler to take it down to the shed and gait it into the loom but there’s not much point having a warp if you haven’t got the weft to weave into it. It’s just struck me that I keep talking about warp and weft and the younger ones mightn’t know the difference. Warp ends are the threads which come through the loom towards you. Weft is the thread on the shuttle which weaves its way across the loom through the warp threads when the shuttle is knocked across. Get hold of an old fashioned tea towel and look very carefully at how the threads cross each other and you’ll get the idea. Don’t do it with a tee shirt, these aren’t woven, they are knitted which is an entirely different process.
The weft is prepared in the winding department at the other end of the top floor of the mill. Here Frank Bleasdale the winding master presided over his kingdom but all the work was done by Judy Northage and her mate Jean Smith. Another lady, Mrs Iveson used to help out occasionally when they were busy, I have an idea she was a weaver as well. The weft came in on cones but was rewound on to wooden or paper pirns that fitted into the shuttle. At one time, weft used to come in ready wound from the mule but re-winding the weft was always seen as a better way to do the job as if there were going to be any breakages due to weak places in the yarn it was better if it happened during winding as this didn’t fault the cloth. As the pirns were wound, Frank used to put them in wheeled boxes and take them down into the shed. Each box was labelled with the type and count of yarn and weavers used to get it as they needed it in weft tins.
So we’ve reached the stage where we’ve got a warp sized and gaited ready for the loom, we’ve got weft wound on to pirn and waiting in the shed. All we need is a tackler to set the loom up and we can get weaving.
As a weaver wove she or he got to the end of the thread on the weaver’s beam and the warp was said to be 'woven out'. The tackler would cut the healds and reed out, take the empty beam out and the loomsweeper would give the loom a good sweeping and oiling. The tackler brought the new warp down from upstairs on a two-wheeled bogey and fitted it into the loom. He made any adjustments needed for that type of cloth and wove the first shuttle for the weaver. I’m not going to attempt to describe the process of gaiting a warp, for one thing I don’t understand it all and for another it’s far too complicated for light reading! Next week we’ll concentrate on the most important job of all, weaving.

23 March 2001