Sunday, October 25, 2009

Silk Reeling

This is my first attempt at silk reeling, and I used two websites heavily for this setup - Wormspit and Silkewerk. Both of the authors of these pages have tons more experience than I do at this, so I was happy for the help that their pages provided. I used a combination of both techniques and setups to make my own.

The setup consisted of a Crock Pot, a twisted copper wire guide, a metal bobbin, a wooden bobbin, and a simple hand crank silk reel. I used 40 cocoons for this first attempt.

The Crock Pot is used to keep the cocoons hot so the sericin (the glue that holds the silk together to form the cocoon) is soft and the silk can be reeled. The twisted copper wire guide is set up in such a way that there are two loops that look like corkscrews. This is so it's easy to add new filaments to the reeled thread as a cocoon runs out of silk or a filament breaks. If I used a guide that was a solid ring it would be more difficult to add new filaments. This copper corkscrew type of guide is actually from the medieval period, which I like. I used a clamp to affix the guide to the side of the pot. The bottom loop helps keep the cocoons together and the top loop incorporates the filaments into one thread.



Then I needed to set up a bobbin someplace away from the pot so that the silk had some distance to travel between the pot and the reel. This is to help the silk dry before it gets laid down on the bobbin. If the silk is still very wet when it is reeled onto the final bobbin then the sericin will re-glue the silk back onto itself and the thread will never come off of the bobbin. The medieval reeling machines are larger than my reel and had some space between the pot and the reel. I decided I wanted as much space as possible, so I used a metal sewing bobbin on a nail driven through a board. I clamped this to the counter on the other side of the kitchen.



Since I would need to reel and tend to the cocoons at the same time, I set up the reel on the same table as the pot. The reel is just a simple hand crank reel, with no gearing of any kind. It was made by Farthegn (the same guy who made my awesome bug room in the basement) and the side comes off to replace the bobbin. I clamped this to the table and then I was all set to go.



I started off by soaking the cocoons in hot tap water in a mason jar (these jars were recommended because they are tough enough to handle extreme temperature changes, as you'll see in a minute). I put a glass on top that fit inside the jar to hold the cocoons under the water. I left it like this for five minutes.



In the meantime I heated up the Crock Pot and boiled some water. I filled the Crock Pot with the boiling water. Then it was time to empty the hot water from off of the cocoons and to fill the jar with cold water. Then I drained the cold water and put the cocoons in the Crock Pot. This change in temperature is supposed to help make it easier to find the end of the silk filament on the cocoons.

When the cocoons go in the hot water they will bubble and sizzle as they take in the water. The cocoons will fill up with water about 70% of the way. Since they don't completely fill with water they will float. I stirred them with a wooden skewer and poked each one under the water until they stopped bubbling and sizzling.



When the cocoons are done making noise then they are ready to reel. The first thing that has to be done is to find the "one true filament", meaning the one filament that is continuous, unbroken, and that makes up most of the silk in the cocoon. I decided that I wanted to work with around 10 filaments per thread, so I started by just stirring the pot with the skewer and lifting the cocoons out of the pot. Then I starting pulling off silk ends until I found the one filament on each of ten cocoons.



The cocoons have silk on the outside of them that is not part of the "one true filament". When the worm makes it's cocoon it lays down short filaments of silk as a foundation on which to build the cocoon. Before the worm makes the continuous filament the outside of the cocoon is already well started, but this silk on the outside has the short filaments and can't be reeled in one piece. So this silk must be removed in order to find the desired filament.

Once the selected filaments have been threaded through both loops, around the metal bobbin, and wound onto the wooden bobbin then reeling can begin in earnest!



Here you can see the cocoons in the pot jumping around. The jumping ones are being unreeled and as the silk comes off of them they jerk around. The reeling also makes a slight hissing sound, which you can't hear because the metal bobbin and the reel makes such a racket.



Here is the noisy metal bobbin at work.



When a filament would break or a cocoon ran out of filament I had to add another filament to replace it. You want there to be a consistent thickness of thread so you want to make sure you keep the number of filaments as consistent as possible. So I did a lot of pausing to count filaments and make sure I kept between 10 and 12 filaments going. Sometimes I got down to eight, and at times I was as high as 14. But for the most part I think my thread is pretty even.

Here is how I replaced a filament. Experienced reelers can replace a filament without stopping the reel. There was no way I could do this, and when I noticed a broken filament all reeling came the a screeching halt so I could add a new one.



I also had the whole thread break a few times, so I just tied the broken ends together. The knot was so small you couldn't even see it, and I snipped the free ends short so I shouldn't be an issue. At least I hope it won't be. During the reeling process I also had to watch out for stray, slubby silk that would sometimes get sucked up off of a cocoon and get incorporated into the thread. This makes a big ugly mess in the thread so I would have to pick that part out as gently as possible without disturbing the main thread.

As the cocoons are reeled they get thinner and more transparent. You can see some in this picture that are starting to get transparent and thin. They are towards the back of the group of cocoons.



Eventually the cocoon will run out of usable silk and will just drop off of the thread. Here is a picture of a cocoon that is done being reeled, and you can see the pupa inside. It's the dark looking thing in the upper left corner all by itself.



When I got to the point where I couldn't incorporate any more filaments into the thread, and I dropped down to eight threads per filament, I broke the filaments and stopped reeling. In this next picure you see what is left - a bunch of thin cocoons with pupae in them and the waste silk from the outside of the cocoons.



When it was all done, here is what the wooden bobbin looked like.



At this point the silk needed to be reeled off of the wooden bobbin and onto another bobbin to make sure that the silk is dry and is not sticking together. Unfortunately I didn't plan ahead and have extra bobbins on hand so I had to rig something up so I could reel from the bobbin onto a cardboard tube. Here is how that setup went.

I set up the wooden bobbin so it hung on a wooden dowel and would turn easily. I stuffed the cardboard tube with tissue paper and secured it with a rubber band to the reeler. Then I put the thread around the metal bobbin and onto the tube and started re-reeling.



My plan was to re-reel the whole wooden bobbin, but my arm got tired so I stopped for the night. I want to re-reel equal amounts onto two tubes so that I can more easily double the thread later, but it's going to be a guessing game as to when to stop with one tube and start the next. I just hope that when I continue re-reeling tomorrow that I don't find my silk stuck to the bobbin.

Next thing I have to do is double the thread, and I need either a drop spindle or a spinning wheel to make this happen. I have no experience with either, so I need to find one or the other and hope I don't screw it up!


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2 Comments:

At October 27, 2009 at 10:45 AM , Blogger CYARA said...

So neat! Thank you for such a clear and detailed explanation, Serena. The videos are great.

 
At July 2, 2010 at 10:16 PM , Anonymous promotionmal said...

I found your post very interesting, I think you are a brilliant writer. I added your blog to my bookmarks and will return in the future. I want to encourage you to continue that marvelous work, have a great daytime!

 

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