A Treatise on Hat-Making and Felting / Including a Full Exposition of the Singular Properties of Fur, Wool, and Hair

by hatter John Thomson

A few familiar facts dependent upon this inherent felting quality of hair will aid the illustration. When a hair is held by the top, it can be severed with a razor much more readily than if held by the root. Again, a hair held by the root, and drawn through between the finger and thumb, feels quite smooth, but when held by the top, a rough and tremulous motion is perceived.

Again, place a hair of three or four inches in length by the middle, between the finger and thumb, and twirl it a few times, when the hair will be found to proceed towards one end, as the twirling and rubbing are continued, and invariably advancing root end foremost, whichever way the hair is placed between the fingers. If two hairs are used in this example, lay the root of the one to the top of the other, their respective motions will be doubly discernible.

The cause of all these singularities of the hair it is now designed to explain, which shall be done as explicitly and concisely as possible, with a few proofs of its astonishing power in a collective capacity.

The above-mentioned phenomena are the result of that same long-hidden property, and which is nothing more than a certain clothing or covering, entirely surrounding the stem of every hair, in the form of very minute scales, so very minute, indeed, that it requires the aid of a very powerful microscope to enable the beholder to discern them, and even then but faintly. These scales, which cover thickly every filament of animal hair, wool, fur, &c., are thin pointed lamina, quite similar to the scales on a fish, and overlapping each other as do the shingles or slates upon a house. This state of the hair being understood, the modus operandi of the above examples may be thus explained: When the hair was held by the point, it was easily cut by the edge of the razor entering under the scales; but when held by the root, the instrument slipped smoothly over them; and the hair that was drawn through the fingers, when held by the point, felt rough and tremulous, from the jagged points of the scales, but smooth when drawn in their own direction.

The twirling of the hairs between the finger and thumb, resulting in their travelling motion, was on account of the points of the scales catching on the fingers, in the act of rubbing, similar to the heads of wheat or barley at harvest time which school-boys put into the sleeves of their coats, and which are sure to come out at some other extremity to that at which they were put in, caused by the working of the boy's arm upon the jaggy beard or awn of the barley head.

The task of counting the number of these lamina that clothe the body of these hairs, must have been both tedious and difficult, from their very minuteness and profusion. On a single filament of merino wool, as many as 2400 barbed scales, like teeth, projecting from the centre stem, have been counted in the space of one inch. On Saxony wool there were 2700, while other wools were as low as 1860, and none were found to have so few as 1000 to the inch.

No vegetable wools whatever, such as cotton, &c., have any such appendage upon their fibres, and, consequently, cotton or cotton goods never shrink in the act of washing, as woollen goods do. Cotton, therefore, never can become a suitable material for felting purposes, every fibre being smooth from end to end in either direction, and in contradistinction to fur, which, though equally smooth as the cotton in one way, rebels triumphantly when irritated in the contrary direction, as already described. Mechanically speaking, cotton is smooth, solid, and triangular, whilst wool is rough, tubular, and cylindrical.

The grand cause of that mysterious and curious operation called felting, fulling, shrinking, thickening, and solidifying of a fabric, whether of original loose wool, fur, or other stuff, or of that spun into yarn and woven into cloth, is the presence of these scales.

Till lately, the best operative hatter and the investigating philosopher were equally at a loss to explain upon what principle such effects were produced. Take, for instance, a handful of wet fur or wool, which is merely an assemblage of hairs; squeeze and press it, work it a little in the hand, and then observe the effect; for immediately upon pressing it a certain locomotion is thereby conferred upon every fibre of that assemblage, which is increased by every turn of position that is given to the body of wool. The rolling and pressing change the position of each fibre. A friction is produced upon every member composing the mass; a footing as it were is obtained from the scales of each, and the fur or wool being all bent or curled, a progressive motion goes on, interlacing each other in their travels, resulting in a compact, dense body, which may well challenge the goddesses of both patience and perseverance to undo. Every hair has been travelling in its own individual direction, boring, warping, grasping, holding, and twisting amongst its fellows like a collection of live worms.

The power of combination, like the fable of the bundle of sticks, is strikingly illustrated in the case of the hair, which when viewed singly seems so very insignificant, but collectively, and when pressed by the hand of oppression, hardship, and ill treatment, they combine and become strong and defiant, clasping each other in their embrace, tenaciously clinging to each other the more they are tortured, as if they were living rational beings, conscious of their innocence, and free from guilt.