Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
FINENESS/DENSITY
CLEAN WOOL YIELD
1
3
4
3
3
2
2
2
2
1
4
3
Number 1 tends to be fi ne and dense
wool and #4 is coarse and thin; #2
and #3 fall somewhere in between.
The length of the wool tends to be
the opposite of the denseness, so
wool around the neck is usually short.
Number 1 is typically the cleanest
wool and #4 is typically the dirtiest,
with a high proportion of vegetable
matter in the wool.
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Fiber diameter.
“Spinning count,” “blood grading,” and “micron” sys-
tems are all approaches used to describe the fi ber diameter. Spinning
count originally meant that 1 pound (0.5 kg) of a particular type of
fl eece wool would spin that many “hanks” of wool (a hank is 560 yards
[511.8 m]). So 70s would spin 70 hanks and 60s would spin 60 hanks.
The count system usually went only as fi ne as 80s count, but German
Saxony Merino has been known to grade 90s; in other words, 1 ounce
(30 mL) of the single fi bers laid end to end would stretch 100 miles
(161 km)! Spinning count is used more often abroad than in the United
States and is always expressed in even numbers.
The blood system of grading the fi neness of wool originally indicated what
fraction of the blood of the sheep was from the Merino breed, which produced
the fi nest-diameter wool. This term no longer relates actually to Merino or
part-Merino blood but instead qualifi es the relative degree of fi ber diameter.
The micron system uses a laboratory test to measure the average diameter
of the wool fi ber and is most often used by commercial buyers who are pur-
chasing large quantities of wool. In the micron system, the larger the number,
the coarser the wool.
