Free Sample
The Complete Handbook of Fiber Cards & Brushes
A practical guide for professionals, businesses, and serious hobbyists to select, use, and maintain fiber cards and brushes for wool preparation, blending, and finishing.
by Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: Understanding Fiber Cards & Brushes
A fiber card is not a brush in the way a hairbrush is a brush. It is a precision tool with thousands of fine, angled steel wires embedded in a flexible backing, designed to align, separate, and blend loose animal or plant fibers into a uniform web. The brush you use in fiber preparation—whether a large paddle brush for finishing a garment or a hand card with a wooden handle—is a specific form of that same tool, built for a different part of the process. The confusion between the two is common, but understanding their mechanics is the first step to using them properly.
The Core Function: Alignment and Blending
When wool leaves a sheep, it is a messy, tangled mass called a fleece. It contains dirt, vegetable matter, short fibers, and the natural grease called lanolin. Washing removes the dirt and grease, but it does not align the fibers. In that washed, un-carded state, the fibers are what a spinner calls "jumbled." They point in every direction. If you tried to spin yarn from this state, you would get a thick, thin, lumpy, and weak strand because the fibers would be gripping each other at random angles and not sliding smoothly past one another.
A fiber card works by moving the material between two surfaces covered in fine wire teeth. The teeth are angled in opposite directions on the two surfaces. As the surfaces move past each other, the material is pulled