From wiki: "Wool fiber exteriors are hydrophobic (repel water) and the interior of the wool fiber is hygroscopic (attracts water)" if that makes things clearer. And a schematic diagram from a web search shows no hollow core. On Feb 14, 2011, at 6:22 PM, Fred Sturm wrote: > On Feb 13, 2011, at 8:40 AM, Dale Erwin wrote: > >> I'm curious. I learned from Jack Brand (during the Weickert felt >> trials) at Wurzen felt that wool fibers are hollow, which is why >> they can hold so much moisture. ie rugs, sweaters etc > > > This statement caught my eye, and has made me wonder. Are wool > fibers, in fact, hollow? I sort of doubt it, but I don't know. Does > anyone actually know for certain? > My take on wool absorbing water is not that there is a "hollow > spot inside to hold it," but that the wool fibers themselves (that > is, the material itself of the fibers, the proteins I suppose) > "attract" and "absorb" the water (quotes because I'm sure there are > scientific terms for these things that I don't happen to know). Kind > of like the protein in gelatin, or in hide glue. In any case, the > individual fibers do swell in the presence of water - I am pretty > certain of that. In swelling, they spread out their little scales so > that those will tend to interlock with the scales of other fibers, > all of them being pressed more tightly together because the space > between them is taken up by all of them swelling, if they are > constrained in some way (as in center bushing felt, for instance, > constrained between the pin and the wood). This is a part of the > felting process. > Do they swell with lacquer, or the various solvents associated with > it? I don't think so. In any case, drenching hammers in lacquer > thinner, acetone, or alcohol doesn't seem to make them expand, or > leave them larger than before. Water does make them expand and they > end up larger than before. > So I don't think we know whether the solids in lacquer penetrate > the wool fibers when we dope hammers. I have always pictured it as > coating the fibers. And have wished that someone would do electron > micrography on lacquered hammers so we could see. > Regards, > Fred Sturm > fssturm at unm.edu > http://www.youtube.com/fredsturm > Regards, Fred Sturm fssturm at unm.edu http://www.youtube.com/fredsturm -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20110214/c943a921/attachment-0001.htm> -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: pastedGraphic.tiff Type: image/tiff Size: 293998 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://ptg.org/pipermail/caut.php/attachments/20110214/c943a921/attachment-0001.tiff>
This PTG archive page provided courtesy of Moy Piano Service, LLC