Wool Hugh Howey

Shearing

Sheep shearing is the process in which a worker (a shearer) cuts off the woolen fleece of a sheep. After shearing, wool-classers separate the wool into four main categories:

• fleece (which makes up the vast bulk)
• broken
• bellies
• locks

The quality of fleeces is determined by a technique known as wool classing, whereby a qualified person, called a wool classer, groups wools of similar grading together to maximize the return for the farmer or sheep owner. In Australia, before being auctioned, all Merino fleece wool is objectively measured for average diameter (micron), yield (including the amount of vegetable matter), staple length, staple strength, and sometimes color and comfort factor.

Scouring

Wool straight off a sheep is known as "raw wool", "greasy wool"[8] or "wool in the grease". This wool contains a high level of valuable lanolin, as well as the sheep's dead skin and sweat residue, and generally also contains pesticides and vegetable matter from the animal's environment. Before the wool can be used for commercial purposes, it must be scoured, a process of cleaning the greasy wool. Scouring may be as simple as a bath in warm water or as complicated as an industrial process using detergent and alkali in specialized equipment.[9] In north west England, special potash pits were constructed to produce potash used in the manufacture of a soft soap for scouring locally produced white wool.

Vegetable matter in commercial wool is often removed by chemical carbonization.[10] In less-processed wools, vegetable matter may be removed by hand and some of the lanolin left intact through the use of gentler detergents. This semigrease wool can be worked into yarn and knitted into particularly water-resistant mittens or sweaters, such as those of the Aran Island fishermen. Lanolin removed from wool is widely used in cosmetic products such as hand creams.