Scribbling

Scribbling and carding engines, 1898. The scribbler is the machine furthest from the camera, with the automatic weigher at its left side.

The scribbler was the first part of a group of machines known collectively as the carding engine. These were the largest and most complex machines used in the blanket making process.

An automatic weigher and feeder delivered regular and even quantities of wool to the scribbler. The scribbler itself consisted of a large roller called a swift which was covered with 'card clothing'; this was leather sheet stuck full of bent steel wires or 'fingers'. The wires were graduated in size from coarse to fine and worked the different sizes of fibre. As the swift revolved it carried the wool under several pairs of smaller worker and stripper rollers. The workers opened out and separated any hard knots of wool, as well as allowing dirt particles to fall out from the web of fibres. The strippers removed the carded wool from the workers and returned it to the swift to be worked on by the next pair of rollers.

At the end of the scribbler was the 'doffer' roller which stripped the wool from the swift. A rapidly moving blade called a doffer comb removed a fine web of wool fibres from the doffer in a continuous sheet, which was then picked up by the 'scotch feed' mechanism and delivered to the carder.

Clare Sumner