In my previous post "Why are Merinos nobles Fibers" in which I described the 3 SALIENT characteristics of extrafine noble fibers I mentioned the fineness of the fiber expressed in microns.
Wool is a natural fiber made from the fleece of sheep and this has 2 consequences:
extreme variety of wool finesse between different sheep breeds
variability of characteristics of the fleece between the various areas of the body of the same sheep.
Of course, the textile industry tends to group fibres into as homogeneous batches as possible, but it follows that we can only call a cloth an "average finesse".
The mean finesse of a cloth defines the median value of the diameter of the fibers that make it up and is expressed in microns; I would remind you that this unit of measurement represents the thousandth of a millimeter. The finest fibers come from sheep from the Merino strain.
For a practical comparison, human hair can range from 30 microns to 40 microns and above.
One of the most important aspects to understand is that ordinary and coarse fibers when they come into contact with our touch do not flex and tend to irritate hair follicles and nerve endings of our hand. This tends to give us a generally unpleasant feeling of annoyance. Merino wool fibers, on the other hand, are very flexible and therefore give us a tactile feeling of pleasantness.
In an important study conducted by Eugenio Ramella in one of the most exhaustive essays on the subject (Clothing Fabrics – Design Methods, Formulas, Calculations, Examples- Ed. Gariazzo, 1999, Biella) the author attempted to give objectivity to this report and the results were amazing. It has been shown empirically that, as the diameter of the fibers decreased, the tactile sensation varied exponentially.
The summary of the study, represented by the following graph I have elaborated, puts on the horizontal axis of the axle the average fineness of the wool examined and on the vertical axis of the ordinates the empirical feeling of pleasantness of the "hand" expressed by a group of experts.
The most obvious aspect of the study is that the feeling of pleasantness increases exponentially more as very fine fibers approach, to the touch the difference that is perceived between a wool of 30 microns and 24 microns is less than the difference that an expert can catch between a wool of 17 microns compared to one of 16 microns.
This justifies and explains the research of wool factories specialized in extrafine fabrics in finding increasingly valuable wools to produce jewel fabrics.
In the next posts we will identify what are the commercial characteristics with which the average finesse of wool fabrics is expressed.
Copyright © 2021 - 2031 "Rossano Bisio" by Rossano Bisio. All rights reserved
Commenti