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We’re putting together this series of articles going into some depth about the process of making yarn, its intricacies and challenges, and all the differences throughout the journey. We’ll also be introducing you to our machines in the mill and telling their stories as well. The second instalment introduces you to Chapman.
Here in the mill we do things at a slightly different pace to large, modern carding sets that run on computers, servo motors and are connected to the internet. Chapman, our 1950s Tatham carder was actually built from at least three separate carders and a myriad of other machines, he’s a real Frankenstein of parts. His hopper is made up of parts from a handful of machines, his calendar rollers from an old Platt’s carder, and his coiler from a gillbox.
We inherited this stately old gentleman from my friend (and mentor) John Arbon. John and his friend Simon Chapman (from whom our venerable carder got his name) discovered Chapman languishing in a mill in Bradford, destined for scrap as a symptom of a project that had never quite got off the ground. After buying the various pieces strewn around the mill, John then discovered that the various parts hadn’t ever actually operated together, so a slightly bigger undertaking was in store.
To quote John, “I must say without the wondrous engineering skills of a certain Mr Chapman I don’t think this carder would have ever run again, so I am forever grateful to him for piecing this wonderful old machine together and working out the complex system and ratios of the drives operating it.”
When John was approaching retirement, the new owners of John Arbon Textiles, Sonja and Helena, decided that the space Chapman was taking up was needed by some other machines. This is a common problem in mills - there is always more demand for space than there is supply! So upon learning of our plans to relocate to the abandoned jeans factory in Cardigan, John called me up and asked quite plainly “you don’t fancy a carder do you?”. Never one to turn down a chance to tinker with machines, I popped down to Devon the very next day to see Chapman and had a long chat with John about our plans, and whether this 1950s statesman (Chapman, not John) fitted into our dreams. We shook hands, and made arrangements for his big move to Wales.
I must confess to getting a little emotional on the long drive home. You see, I’d actually met Chapman a couple of times before on trips to the Devon mill, always amazed by his gentle whirring, producing miles of smooth carded sliver. But actually owning such a marvel? I’d hardly dared to dream.
Inevitably, we couldn’t really afford to buy Chapman, and his companion Clint the Comb (more on him in another edition), but we somehow scraped together the funds, and I went down to Devon to begin the process of dismantling and packing.
It took John and I full week of bolts, screws and seemingly endless old grease before at long last, Chapman was carefully packed on pallets, ready for the long journey to Wales. To say I was stressed is the understatement of the year. Chapman’s main frame is 70 year old cast iron. An engineer I know once described this sort of frame to be “as brittle as carrots”, and I knew any major damage on the lorry home would be the end of him. No chance of spares, very little chance of repairs, and entirely uneconomical to cast new parts, this was it. I bade John and Juliet goodbye, and headed up the M5 motorway to beat the lorry to Cardigan so I could unload at the other end.
The overwhelming relief of discovering everything intact when the side of the lorry opened was a feeling to which I’ve come to be very accustomed, considering all the machines we’ve welcomed since.
After a few weeks of waiting (which was tricky - I’m not known for my patience when it comes to new projects), John and Simon Chapman made the trip to West Wales so we could begin reassembly. Where it had taken John and I the best part of a week to disassemble the carder, under the watchful eye of Simon, we had him mostly rebuilt in just a day. Not once did Simon need to consult the many hundreds of photos I’d taken during dismantling, there was no manual to consult, this was the work of a man who understands these machines inside and out, after a lifetime of working with them.
What followed was months and months of learning, tweaking, trialling, and most importantly of all making countless mistakes. These missteps and gaffes are where the real learning is done. Especially in the first few months of working Chapman, a day of nothing being made was usually a thousand times more valuable than a perfect day of carding, because a good day was down to luck, rather than skill or knowledge. The bad days, the hard days are where we really learned the intricacies of the process, the machine, the fibre. They all have to work in sync to get anywhere. I’ve mentioned before that carding is far more an art than a science, certainly when it comes to such an old machine. Of course there’s plenty of science involved too, and engineering to boot. An understanding of fibre physics, of precise measurements, and of carding actions - they’re all required, but above all else, it’s how it feels. It’s the intangibles, the sounds, the rhythms of the process that uncover the magic. Transforming enormous bales of clean wool into miles of sliver, that’s magic, and you can’t convince me otherwise.