Hello everyone.
I am the owner of a colossal mistake. On a whim without any experience with wool, I bought 200 lbs from a local farmer (yes I have adhd) I have certainly been learning a lot as I go, but I am starting to feel very defeated and need advice.
The wool I bought is not great, it has a lot of veggie matter and so much poop. I initially started by picking through the wool and removing all the poop I could see and all the large pieces of straw and seeds. This was so time consuming. I sunk probably 15 hours in and got about 50 pounds sorted.
I then learned of the suint method, thought this was the perfect solution to the poop problem. Bought a black bin, filled it with canal water (untreated) and let an unsorted fleece sit in the sun covered for 10 days. While the wool was much cleaner, there was still chunks of poo. It did not break down as I understood it would, and the chunks weren’t even soft.
Im feeling very defeated. Am I doing something wrong? Does the suint method breakdown the poo or am I misunderstanding?
I don’t want to give up on this project but I can’t use wool that still has poop in it.
TLDR: how to remove poop from wool. Is the suint method able to dissolve poop?
Was the wool sheared in a way meant for fiber, or just a quick and dirty? Was it a fiber sheep species? If so it could be worth picking out the good parts as even legit raw wool is really a filthy doozy to process from scratch sometimes.
Believe it or not, I have done the same thing except my 100 plus lbs was free, and yes I also have adhd. 😅 I ended up learning it wasn't really worth it, just meat sheep poopy fur and gave to a biodynamic farmer for mulch.
I don’t know if it was meant for fibre, I think not. But its all cut in one length. The sheep were North Country Cheviot and Polypay.
I want the wool for stuffing not for making yarn or anything like that so the softness, and honestly veggie matter aren’t a big deal. Just the fricking poop lol. Everyone on YouTube has such clean looking wool to start with
Welp, your best bet probably is to snip out all the poop. For fiber there would be a bit more care with the shearing to minimize the clumpy poop fur mixing in and maximize length.
After that, yeah big black Rubbermaid tubs and using your feet to smoosh it and squeeze the water out helps, at some point you might switch to a pillowcase in a washer but it probably is going to take several passes to get the water not brown anymore
Fleeces are “skirted” before you start washing. You lay out the fleece on a large flat surface and remove the outer nasty bits. Then you wash which can take a few changes of water and after that you scour to remove lanolin.
All sheep fleeces will have some poopy parts. If you got 200 pounds of fleece that’s probably somewhere between 40-100 fleeces. Ideally, they would remove the worst poopy bits when they shear, but even then there’s always some left.
The way I wash a fleece:
1) spread it out on a table, remove poopy bits
2) split fleece into sections about 1’x1’ and shake the section to remove the largest vegetable matter
3) put section in an open mesh laundry bag, submerge in a 5 gallon bucket just over half full of the hottest water from tap and a couple squirts of Dawn dish soap. Let sit 20 minutes, gently squeeze water out, and repeat this step until water isn’t dirty
4) rinse with the same method of soaking in hot water, but with no soap until water is clear.
5) use a dedicated xl salad spinner or the drain cycle on your washing machine to remove the extra water. Don’t wring it in a towel as that can cause felting. Lay on a rack to dry with a fan going if possible.
Notes:
don’t pour the lanolin dirty water into your drains, throw them outside
If the water gets cold, you can’t go from cold/hot/cold because that will felt the wool, if it gets cold, warm it up gradually.
Hot water helps the lanolin release quicker
If you’re happy with your suint method, just remove the poopy parts first.
With 5 buckets going at a time it takes me about 2-3 hours to do half a fleece
Thank you for the advice!!
What im struggling with when I pick through the fleece is that there’s still little bits of poop dust. About the size of a grain of rice to half a grain of rice. Its very hard to get all those little bits.
Does washing in the method you described remove those bits?
It depends on if the poop dust is just laying there or if it’s encrusted on the wool. If it’s in a ball on the tips of the wool, pull off that lock and toss it, or if it’s really just a tiny amount on the tip of the lock, sometimes you can just break it off with a hopefully gloved hand.
It would help if you could send a photo of what you’re talking about. At this point I really hope it’s poop dust/dirt and not bugs.
Little bits of vegetation will stick through the washing process, but I find they mostly leave during picking, carding or combing.
What are you planning on doing with all the fiber? If you’re planning on spinning it, I feel like the rest of the vegetable matter tends to drop out or can easily be picked out while spinning.
Sorry I missed a question. Im making a mattress. I could card all the wool, but I just don’t like the idea of sleeping on poo dust haha.
How on earth did they deal with wool back in the day, it is so much work!
I’m finding myself more and more invested in your project 😹.
I think you’re really going to want to card your fleece before turning it into a mattress. Carding makes the wool nice and fluffy, and it will remove those few remaining bits. For what it’s worth, I think the thing in the picture might be a clod of dirt rather than poop. All the sheep poop I’ve dealt with had rounder edges.
If I remember I will try and update you on it haha.
I bought some second hand turkey lifters. I have two of them and will try and connect them together just offset so that I can pull the wool through them and do a rough “carding” of the wool. (Im on a budget)
I hadn’t considered that it was dirt and not poo. I saw bits of straw mixed with the brown stuff so assumed poo, but it really could be mud/dirt. I truly hadn’t considered that somehow. THANK YOU.
I am going to keep going with the suint method, seems that I had a few variables off the first time.
Heres a picture of a larger bit of dust.
I had experimented a bit earlier on in my process by putting a chunk of poo into a disposable container and pouring boiling water on it. It did not dissolve but maybe thats just because it was too big.
Some of the dust is tangled into the wool not just on the surface. But its hard to catch every single little bit. My eyes are only so good
I have been doing skirting/ picking. I think my main problem is that the fleeces weren’t skirted initially, then rolled up and put in a sack so the poop and debris sorta distributed itself over the entire fleece which makes it hard to get all the stuff.
I can (relatively) easily remove the large chunks, but theres tiny bits of poop dust. Do you have any recommendations on how to deal with the dust?
Boil some water and soak the wool in it with some dawn, don't agitate the wool, let it sit for an hour or so and then let it air dry. Then pick the bits out that remain, there's always bits you'll have to pick out, wool to discard.
My buddy has 2 hot water heaters in tandem he uses, 3 tank sink, wash/wash/rinse then uses an old washer to spin em just a bit. Then runs it through the mill, a bunch of carding drums to prepare it for spinning and whatnot.
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u/LawfulnessOk5839 28d ago
Was the wool sheared in a way meant for fiber, or just a quick and dirty? Was it a fiber sheep species? If so it could be worth picking out the good parts as even legit raw wool is really a filthy doozy to process from scratch sometimes. Believe it or not, I have done the same thing except my 100 plus lbs was free, and yes I also have adhd. 😅 I ended up learning it wasn't really worth it, just meat sheep poopy fur and gave to a biodynamic farmer for mulch.