Where to find thread count?

[Paul Henry]

The actual size of the sett is often down to the weaver , while it has to have the correct threadcount (whatever that might be) there are often minor little ajustments the weaver might make to enable the tarten to be woven, sometimes slightly increasing or decreasing large colour areas for example.The threadcount does not indicate what size the finished tartan will be , it is a formula for the design, which means if very fine threads are used such as silk the design will be small, and if very large strands are used a very large pattern and proportionally thicker cloth as well will result. It's usually possible to scale up a threadcount to make a larger sett , something that I've used with DC Dalgliesh many times,
As to why there are differences between the registers I suspect that human error is one reason, whether in the counting of thread of old samples or indeed simple typos might account for quite a lot of the problems

[figheadair]

Thanks for the explanation. I ran this through the ScotWeb tartan design tool, and the difference was remarkable. Why such a difference? Does this account for different sett sizes?

Did you pick up the fact that the counts were to the half pivot which is the way a weaver records them. Using full counts on the pivot was something introduced by DC Stewart in his Setts and has lead to all sorts of errors over time. Anyone sending a count to a weaver for making up should always to state whether the pivots counts are full or half.

Paul explained about sett sizes and the need to keep counts proportional. That is not the case in the two I gave. The Wilsons' setting was for plaidng/fine shawls and gave a large sett. Modern manufacturers don't like these as the cloth has less utility and so they tend to cut them, often to the detriment of the original seting IMHO, in order to maximise profit.

As to why there are differences between the registers I suspect that human error is one reason, whether in the counting of thread of old samples or indeed simple typos might account for quite a lot of the problems

Errors and typos accepted, it's generally a commercial consideration as discribed above.