I process a lot of raw wool for spinning and I really enjoy it. After the wool is scoured and dried, it can carded (by hand or machine) or combed. Clearly, there isn't a way to speed up combing wool by hand except for loads of practice. Are drum carders a different story?
After I'd been spinning for a while, I invested in a drum carder in the hopes it would speed things up. I was doing a lot of art yarn spinning at the time so I bought an Ashford Wild Carder. It worked well. With its super long teeth, it easily held 30 gms of fiber. I was surprised at how long it took me to get a batt (or six) finished so it seemed time to upgrade to an electric carder.
Between research and budget I chose an electric Fancy Kitty. What a treat, no more turning the handle! But, it still took me the better part of a morning to get six batts done. In the meantime, I'd been hanging out at my friend Lisa's house a bit. Lisa has the best of everything; she's been spinning forever and has acquired a whole lot of tools along her journey. She has about 5 carders including an electric Louet and a Pat Green Supercard and she can't get fiber carded any more quickly than I.
I'd known about Pat Green's carders forever and I really wanted one. I could have afforded a manual one but thought I'd be happier with an electric. When a Deb's Delicate Deluxe came up for sale for a great price so I grabbed it even though it was manual. Guess what? I can card up six batts on the Pat Green as fast as I can on my electric carder!
I might mention that I also have a pair of hand cards. Spinning rolags is the best and I love long draw spinning. I need way more practice with them but it is really nice to be able to sit on the sofa with hand cards and a basket of clean wool to card. Folks skilled at making rolags can probably beat a drum carder at getting wool ready to spin.
In summary: in my experience, carding is a slow process and the carder itself probably plays only a small role in how quickly wool can be turned into batts. The type of fiber and the quality of the fiber matter more than does the specific carder. That's not to say that some carders aren't better than others but you do have to go through the same motions with every carder. So, I don't think that there really isn't a magic bullet (carder).
What make a carder better? I think a higher ratio between drum and licker in helps. Gearing on manual carders that makes the handle easy to turn is a help. The tpi (teeth per inch) matters too. 120 tpi is going to a pain to use with coarse wool and merino will need extra passes with 42 tpi. Personally, I think that having two drum carders is a good setup; one coarse and one fine.
Notes:
I never put more that about an ounce of fiber on either carder; I find that adding more results in a compacted batt that doesn't draft as easily as a thinner batt. The two minutes needed to remove the batt is worth the improvement in spinning experience. Also, GIGO (garbage in-garbage out) applies to carding. Try to card fiber with a lot of second cuts, you'll get a batt full of nepps and noils. Same for chaff; a carder won't clean fiber. Yes, the licker in will grab some of the second cuts and chaff but not all. When shopping for a carder, I recommend getting a lower tpi than you think you need because you can always run the fiber through twice and you'll have more versatility in carding coarser fiber.
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