A visit to DC Dalgliesh

[Alan H]

Many thanks to Nick Fiddes for permission to post the following pictures!

After taking the official Locharron tour in Selkirk, I followed Cessna152towsers instructions and walked down the street a bit to find the DC Dalgliesh mill. The building is nothing special and there were a few lasses having a bit to eat outside. Being the brash sort, I just marched right in and introduced myself to the lovely lass who was attending to a couple of orders. I explained who I was, about X Marks and she VERY kindly took nearly 45 minutes of her time and showed us 'round the place. I knew you lads would want to see this!

This little tour will be the first of three: DC Dalgliesh, Locharron, and the Knockando Mill.

[Alan H]

So this is what we saw upon entering, which turns out is the "side door". This is the area where the regular stock of already-woven tartans is kept, and where custom orders are stored, then folded up and shipped out. The lovely lady in the picture told me that she'd worked for the company for 30 years and actually remembers Mr Dalgliesh, the son of the founder, talking about when the company moved into the current building, about 50 years ago.

Stock Area


Now, let's get a look at the Mill itself. For now, Dalgliesh doesn't dye its own yarn. They wind yarn that they purchase from another company in Selkirk, onto the cones used for yarn distribution with a machine which I sadly neglected to photograph., Here are the storage bins.

Yarn Bins


Dyed yarn cones (there's a name for these cones which is completely escaping me) are placed on this rack in particular order and then led onto a wheel *Very* carefully to form the warp of the cloth.

YarnRack

[mookien]

Alan: Very interesting pictures. But, they just whet my appetite for MORE! Thanks for posting.

John

[Alan H]

Here's a view over....I don't know the proper term for it, but we'll call it the "warp wheel", which gathers all the threads lined up on the rack and lays them out in a long layer on long wooden "cassettes" which are basically enormous wooden dowels, about 5 feet long and about as big around as a cantaloupe, and affixed to gears and such.

Warp Wheel


The mill isn't laying out a new warp for a new order, so there are no threads on the rack, being pulled by the wheel onto the cassettes. I hope this makes sense. The way it's done is that the warp is laid out first. Think of the warp as the longitudinal threads of the cloth. If you order a custom run of 20 yards of single-width cloth, then they will lay out about 22 yards of warp. That will get fed into the single-width loom (pictures in a minute) and the loom will put in the weft threads, to make the 28-inch wide material.

Here are a couple of the big, double-width cloth looms.



Another of the big looms...double-width cloth

[rtown]

Great pictures, Thanks so much for sharing.

[Alan H]

And another of the big looms.... there were 4-5 in the building, though none were operating at the time.
If they're not operating, then why is there still cloth on them? Because when you start a new run for a new piece, one of the workers takes the free end of the warp threads from new cloth...sitting on the newly wound cassette, and painstakingly ties it, thread by thread to the cloth that's left on the loom from the last run. That way the loom just "keeps on going". If you were to take the last bits of cloth off of the loom, you'd not only have to knot every single thread, which is tedious enough, but you'd have to re-thread the whole loom....a nightmare of a job and seriously time-consuming, meaning expensive.

Another of the "big" looms...



And here's what you've been waiting for! Dalgliesh is renowned for its small, custom orders, usually of single-width fabric. Well, gents,here is the loom that weaves your single-width custom order!



If I recall correctly,this loom dates from about 1923.

Now, here is the thing.... over at Locharron, there are computers which control the looms, which are massive. This picture is the "computer" which controls which shuttle, carrying which color of thread, runs through the fabric to lay down another weft thread. It's the pattern of holes and gaps in those little steel oblong-thingies that control the shuttles and the shuttle cassette.



And here is a shuttle. Big looms use a different technique to run the weft threads through the warp threads, but this is an older loom and it still works the old way. I saw identical shuttles to this at the Knockando Mill, whose equipment dates from the late 1800's. It's slower than the more "modern" way, but it works just fine!




Hope you enjoyed our little tour!

[creagdhubh]

Absolutely cracking photos, Alan! I love being able to actually see where my Macpherson kilt in Dalgliesh's reproduction colours was born. It's also rather humbling to see the actual looms that will weave my future kilt(s). Thank you for sharing these.

Cheers,

[Macman]

Great pictures, Alan. Thanks for the tour!

[Alan H]

You're welcome, gents. I knew a lot of you lads would love to see this!

craigdubh, the odds are good that the woman in the pictures is the actual lass who will lay out the warp threads, draw them on the cassette, and thread the loom for your order. There are 3-4 employees at the mill, but I believe she is the most experienced.

There is actually an even older way of aligning theads for the warp...old and simple, with just a wooden framework and dowels. They still have that setup, there at DC Dalgliesh, and I saw the same setup at Knockando, where it's used for blankets and plain-weave cloth. It won't do for production of large quantities of tartan cloth, but it can still be done for shorter runs. I believe that they'll use the racks and wheels and the single-width cassette for all the runs nowadays, though, and personally I'd prefer it that way as it's almost certainly more accurate.

[creagdhubh]

You're welcome, gents. I knew a lot of you lads would love to see this!

craigdubh, the odds are good that the woman in the pictures is the actual lass who will lay out the warp threads, draw them on the cassette, and thread the loom for your order. There are 3-4 employees at the mill, but I believe she is the most experienced.

There is actually an even older way of aligning theads for the warp...old and simple, with just a wooden framework and dowels. They still have that setup, there at DC Dalgliesh, and I saw the same setup at Knockando, where it's used for blankets and plain-weave cloth. It won't do for production of large quantities of tartan cloth, but it can still be done for shorter runs. I believe that they'll use the racks and wheels and the single-width cassette for all the runs nowadays, though, and personally I'd prefer it that way as it's almost certainly more accurate.

Wow! That is wonderful!