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Thread: Counting Sheep

  1. #31
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    No real way to know as the "Average Sheep" is hard to define. Different sheep render different amounts of wool per fleece. As does where the sheep is raised, here in the SW the sheep have a tendency to gather greater amounts of "burr" and are shorn earlier than sheep farther north. Greater time between shearing gives more growth, thus more wool. I was trying to use published data to find the average, boiling down to weight of finished kilt to weight of fleece. Rocky seems to think I over estimated, and I admit I was ball parking alot of the figures; however I was using raw weight of wool not yield as to 30' or 60' (single or double bolt).

    Another concern is the colors of the kilt. Wools mordant (dye) differently than others, so more than likely the blues and reds would be from different sheep, and maybe completely different breeds. Yet another concern is the quality of the wool to begin with; rougher wool tends to spin to rougher thread and would be denser than say Marino or cashmere.

    So lets take a look at the "Ball Park" for a true 9 yard kilt. 9 yards of Single width cloth 30" @ 16 oz per yard would be 144 oz. Depending on the loss from shearing to weaving lets take each step.

    Say we are using clean fleece and get a 60% yield of usable fiber(this is really high as most fleeces have things you don't want to know about in them), our 144 oz now becomes 240 oz of raw fleece.

    In the spinning process you will lose another 10- 15%, I know I've watched my mum go through bags of wool and am always amazed by how much she says is "junk". So at 85% yield our 240 oz now becomes 282 oz.

    Once the fiber has been spun it needs to be dyed, but for this argument lets assume no loss due to dying. The dyed thread now has to be woven, not going into the weft and weave process, lets assume the only loss to weight is to wastage. Machine woven stuff has at least a 5% wastage, handwoven closer to 15% (the more partime the weaver the more wastage; knots, balls, cats love to sleep in looms) but for this exercise lets use the 5% that is common to machine woven textiles. Our 282 oz now becomes 297 oz.

    Rocky seem to think that the is fairly little wastage on a 30' piece of cloth, so we will use his number of 3%, our 297 becomes 306 oz of fleece needed to create a 9 yard 16 oz kilt. 306 oz = 19.15 lbs. of raw wool.

    Here is where you get into the quibbling about the average sheep. Australian and New Zealand sheep have a tendency of producing more per sheep fleece than else where in the world, but when taken to the mean the number of 5.8 lbs per fleece still seems to hold up. so at 5.8 lbs (2.7 kg) per fleece 19.15 lbs/5.8 = 3.03 sheep.

    So , Assuming these calculations hold up; a 9 yard full dress tank would be 3 sheep, a 4 yard box pleat would be 1 and a half (weave seen the half sheep earlier in the thread), one of McMurdos 24 oz MOD's would be about 4.5 sheep.

    The only thing missing from these calculations is; is 16 oz tartan really 16 oz's per yard? I seem to think so from Rocky's statement about a 60' 9 yard would really be a 18 yard kilt. That would not be a Tank, it would be an Aircraft Carrier.

    Bah, Bah Black Sheep have you any wool?

  2. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by BroosterB1 View Post
    ... 9 yards of Single width cloth 30" @ 16 oz per yard would be 144 oz. ...
    The only thing missing from these calculations is; is 16 oz tartan really 16 oz's per yard? ...

    Bah, Bah Black Sheep have you any wool?
    Well, given that fabric weights are given in ounces per yard of double width cloth - 9 yards of 16 oz single-width would weigh 72 oz, not 144 oz.

    Gary (who's actually taken yardage into work and worked out its weight using the digital scale)
    (What, you thought only the Wizard of B.C. did that?)

  3. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wompet View Post
    Well, given that fabric weights are given in ounces per yard of double width cloth - 9 yards of 16 oz single-width would weigh 72 oz, not 144 oz.

    Gary (who's actually taken yardage into work and worked out its weight using the digital scale)
    (What, you thought only the Wizard of B.C. did that?)
    In that case

    9 yard full dress tank would be 1.5 sheep, a 4 yard box pleat would be .75,McMudos Tanks would bewould be about 2.25 sheep.

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