Ashford Wild Carder with Electricarder Review
The Ashford Wild Carder is a little power horse for something
more glamorous than standard carding. Whilst only 4” wide, it has been designed with extra long
teeth to allow your batts to be bulked up with various fibre, ribbons,
feathers and other embellishments.
Because it has a medium carding cloth (72 point) you can still use it to
card ‘straight’ fibre which is often a good starting point before creating
blends.
As I produce my own fibre, I need to process it to a point
before creating any blends or funky art yarns.
At this stage, my wild carder is my only carder so it has to be a work
horse for all sorts. Alpaca fleece will
process quickly as it is smooth compared to wool. Processing wool is a bit slower as the fibres
grab together making work for the wild carder a little harder and works your
arm cranking the handle.
To lighten my load, the people at Electricarder have built a
motor fitted for the Wild Carder. This
is a real productivity boost. Not only
do you card a little faster but you can card more continuously.
What do I mean by carding continuously?
You are spreading, stretching, fluffing the
fibre up as the carder steadily takes in what you have already placed on the
input tray. There is no need to stop,
prepare, load then crank the handle.
Recently I spent a few hours in the shed preparing some
Corriedale batts. They weren’t too chunky/bumpy
this time around and the Electricarder motor allowed me to work at about double
the pace.
I started with 50grams each of red, blue, lime green and
deep green Corriedale fibre. It had been
washed and carded but had been compacted after being in storage for a few
years. The dying and drying process
fluffed it up a bit then the next step was to turn it into batts.
Unfortunately I had a camera malfunction so we only have the
finished product photos as the work in progress photos were lost when the SD
card became corrupted. The pics below are just under slightly different lighting. But I digress.
I first carded each colour individually then laid them out
and matched up the add-ins.
Each 50 grams made three not too tightly packed batts. Once I decided what I would add in I split
the original batts into three and mixed them up. This was done to even out the colour. The red and blue were combined as I was
looking for a purple but with the red and blue elements still visible.
Each thinned batt was then stretched width way and length
way and spread out on my working table.
Then I loaded up the extras onto each thinned batt. A little silk, a little more, a little
Mohair, and a little more... you get the idea.
Spread these out evenly along the batt, then stack them back together to
create one giant sandwich of fluff and colours.
This is then stretched out again and split length ways, then stretched
length ways. You are wanting to stretch
it so you can nearly see through the fibre.
This gives you the best consistency.
At this point I turn on the Electricarder motor and begin to
feed in the fibre sandwich. Now
depending on how much room you have in you work space (mine is tiny) you can
split the batt even further. But you can
do this while the Electricarder keeps working.
There is no stopping and starting to prepare then crank the handle then
prepare and crank the handle, you keep preparing and lining up the fibre. Tidy it up and ensure it is being taken in
evenly between the guides then stretch out some more fibre ready to go. You can take the batts off and put them
through again but I like to keep some of the character of the add ins.
I find about half speed on the Electicarder dial gives me
good pace and good quality. If you find
the drive band starts slipping you may have overloaded it a little. Thin out your input and see how that
goes. As mentioned earlier, different
fibre will perform differently so have a play and adjust your technique to
suit.
Happy Carding J
