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Fulling
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Fulling or tucking or walking ("waulking" in Scotland) is a step in woollen clothmaking which involves the cleansing of cloth (particularly wool) to eliminate oils, dirt, and other impurities, and making it thicker. The worker who does the job is a fuller, tucker, or walker. Despite suggestions to the contrary, essentially, these processes are identical.
ing involves two processes—scouring and milling (thickening).
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Encyclopedia
Fulling or tucking or walking ("waulking" in Scotland) is a step in woollen clothmaking which involves the cleansing of cloth (particularly wool) to eliminate oils, dirt, and other impurities, and making it thicker. The worker who does the job is a fuller, tucker, or walker. Despite suggestions to the contrary, essentially, these processes are identical.
Process
Fulling involves two processes—scouring and milling (thickening). These are followed by stretching the cloth on great frames known as tenters and held onto those frames by tenterhooks. It is from this process that we derive the phrase being on tenterhooks as meaning to be held in suspense. The area where the tenters were erected was known as a tenterground.
Originally, this literally, was pounding the cloth with the fuller's feet (whence the description of them as 'walkers'), or with hands or a club. From the medieval period, however, it often was carried out in a water mill.
Scouring
In Roman times, fulling was conducted by slaves standing ankle deep in tubs of human urine and cloth. Urine was so important to the fulling business that urine was taxed. Urine, known as 'wash', was a source of ammonium salts and assisted in cleansing the cloth.
By the medieval period, fuller's earth had been introduced for use in the process. This is a soft clay-like material occurring in nature as an impure hydrous aluminium silicate. This seems to have been used in conjunction with 'wash'. More recently, soap has been used.
Thickening
The second function of fulling was to thicken cloth, by matting the fibres together to give it strength. This was vital in the case of woollens, made from short staple wool, but not for worsted materials made from long staple wool. After this stage, water was used to rinse out the foul smelling liquor used during cleansing.
Fulling mills
From the medieval period, the fulling of cloth often was undertaken in a water mill, known as a fulling mill, a walk mill, or a tuck mill. In Wales, a fulling mill is called a pandy. In these, the cloth was beaten with wooden hammers, known as fulling stocks. Fulling stocks were of two kinds, falling stocks (operating vertically) that were used only for scouring, and driving or hanging stocks. In both cases the machinery was operated by cams on the shaft of a waterwheel or on a tappet wheel, which lifted the hammer.
Driving stocks were pivotted so that the 'foot' (the head of the hammer) struck the cloth almost horizontally. The stock had a tub holding the liquor and cloth. This was somewhat rounded on the side away from the hammer, so that the cloth gradually turned, ensuring that all parts of it were milled evenly. However, the cloth was taken out about every two hours to undo plaits and wrinkles. The 'foot' was approximately triangular in shape, with notches to assist the turning of the cloth.
History
The first references to fulling mills are reported in Persia from the tenth century. By the time of the Crusades in the late eleventh century, fulling mills were active throughout the medieval Islamic world, from Islamic Spain and North Africa in the west to Central Asia in the east.
The earliest known European reference to a fulling mill, which dates from about 1086, was discovered in Normandy. The earliest reference in England occurs in the Winton Domesday of 1117-19. Other early references belonged to the Knights Templar by 1185.
These mills became widespread during the thirteenth century and occur in most counties of England and Wales, but were largely absent in areas only engaged in making worsteds.
What caused Don Quixote to tilt at windmills? "Six huge Fulling-Mill Hammers which interchangeably thumping several Pieces of Cloth, made the terrible Noise that caus'd all Don Quixote's Anxieties and Sancho's Tribulation that Night." — from Don Quixote by Cervantes.
Popular culture
Popularly, ‘fulling’ is called ‘felting’ or ‘boiled wool’ by those practicing fabric production crafts today (as distinguished from non-woven felt). One can create fulled (felted) fabric at home by beating a sweater in an ordinary washing machine set on hot, with the load size as small, using heavy agitation and soap. The heat, water, and agitation cause the scales of the hair fibers to open up and lock together. The shrunken result is dense, durable, and irreversible.
Woolen fabrics (unless treated), some blends including wool, or almost any animal hair will felt, but synthetics, acrylics, or materials made of plant fiber such as cotton will not. For example, the "mats" that form in cat fur and human hair "dreadlocks" are formed by a similar process of locking the microscopic scales of the hair together.
See also
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