Rereeling Room
Testing the Skeins
Color of Raw Silk
The raw silk is reeled on travellers in hanks known as skeins and varying from 50 to 100 grams in weight, which are taken off by the reeling girl and the ends of the thread tied up to facilitate the work at the mill. Before leaving the filature it is also subjected to critical tests and examinations for size, winding, cleanliness, irregularities, etc. The color of raw silk as it comes off the cocoon and is reeled into skeins is either white or yellow, though some sorts have a brownish or greenish tinge. Tussah silks have a brownish-yellow color. The coloring matter in the cultivated silks is only in the gum and boils out with it, but the color in the tussah is in the fibre, rendering it very difficult to bleach.
“Books” of Raw Silk Skeins
Reeling Wild Silk
Waste Silk
Tussah, or wild silk, is not generally reeled by the wet reel process, as the cocoons are apt to be closed up at each end by gum. In China this gum is softened by burying the cocoons in manure instead of immersing them in hot water. This is known as dry reeling. It very often happens that the tussah cocoons are unfit for reeling, due to being pierced or tangled. Silk from these imperfect cocoons is again classed as “waste,” along with the frisons, or outside and inmost layers of the cultivated cocoons, which, as has been stated, are used to make spun silk. In this country waste silk is often called schappe, although strictly speaking this name should only be applied to waste silk degummed by the French process of fermentation.