Chapter 16 Section 2 Spinning Machinery

The process of twisting loose fibers into lines and thinning and twisting them into yarn is called spinning. The earliest tool used for spinning in my country is spinning. There is no way to find out the exact time of the appearance of the spinnerets.However, the main part of the spindle, the spinning wheel, has been found in the archaeological excavations of the Cishan site in Hebei, which shows that there was a spindle at least 7,000 years ago.A large number of stone or pottery spinning wheels were unearthed at the Hemudu site in Zhejiang, the Banpo site in Xi'an, Shaanxi, and the Jiangzhai site more than 5,000 years ago, which shows that the spindle has become the main spinning tool at that time.

Judging from these ancient relics, the spindle has two forms: single-sided plunger and tandem plunger (Fig. 12).They are composed of two parts, the spinning wheel and the hammer shaft.The hammer shaft is generally made of wood, bamboo or bone.The earlier one was just a straight rod. After the Warring States Period, a hammer rod with an iron hook on the top appeared.Spinning wheels are generally made of stone flakes inserted into the spindle or pottery flakes after simple polishing.The early spinning wheels were oblate, drum-shaped, bead-shaped, trapezoidal, etc., with a diameter of five or six centimeters and a weight of 50-150 grams.With the development of textile technology, the requirements for yarn fineness are gradually increasing.Most of the later ones are specially fired with clay, and their form tends to be light and thin, with flat or shuttle-shaped sides, slightly reduced diameter, and a weight between 15 and 60 grams. Some are also decorated and painted.

The structure of the spindle looks simple, but its working principle is very scientific.It cleverly uses the weight of the object itself and the force couple generated when it rotates to do work, so that the messy fibers are drawn and twisted to form a yarn.The outer diameter and thickness of the spinning wheel are the key to determine the fineness of the yarn.The outer diameter and weight are larger, the moment of inertia is also relatively large, and the spun yarn is thicker; the outer diameter is moderate, the weight is smaller, and the thickness is thinner, although the moment of inertia is small, the rotatable duration is longer, so the yarn is finer. And relatively uniform.This is also one of the reasons why the early spinning wheels were thicker than the later ones.

Most of the paintings on the unearthed spinning wheels are reddish brown, and a few are black or dark brown, with straight lines, arcs or egg spots forming concentric circles, radial lines and other patterns (Figure 13).The purpose of this kind of decoration is not only to look good, but also to make it easier to judge the direction of twist during twisting and play a role of leveling twist. There are two methods of using the spindle: the method of dropping the spindle and the method of turning the spindle.The spindle used in the drop-spindle method is a single-sided inserting rod type. When spinning, first place the scattered fibers to be spun at a high place or hold it with the left hand, then twist a section from it and wrap it around the upper end of the hammer rod, and then use the thumb and index finger of the right hand to spin the spindle. Twisting the hammer shaft makes the spindle continuously rotate left or right in the air, and at the same time continuously releases fibers from the hand.In this way, the fiber is drawn and twisted during the rotation and descent of the spindle, and when it is spun to a certain extent, the spun yarn is wound on the hammer.Repeat this until the yarn is wrapped around the hammer.The spindle rotates clockwise to form Z-twisted yarn, and vice versa to form S-twisted yarn.

The spindle used in the spindle method is a string-type plunger, because its hammer shaft is much longer than the previous one.When in use, the spindle is not suspended in the air, but leaned on the legs obliquely, and the hammer shaft is twisted on the legs with hands to make the spindle rotate.Due to the limitation of rotation space, the yarns spun are all S twist.In modern times, some places in Shanxi, the Bai nationality in Yunnan, and the Tibetans in Tibet still retained this spinning method. The appearance of the spindle has brought great changes to the production of the primitive society, and it is the starting point of the development of spinning tools in our country.

When spinning with a spindle, the spinning speed of the spindle varies from time to time due to the strength of the human hand twisting the hammer rod each time, so that the spinning speed of the spindle is very uneven.And rub the hammer bar once with your hands, the spindle can only run for a short period of time, and spin a very short section of yarn.With the sudden increase in the demand for yarn in the weaving process, the defect of low spindle efficiency became more and more obvious, making people have to create new spinning tools to replace it. In people's practice, the hand spinning wheel came into being.

It is still unclear when the spinning wheel first appeared.A piece of linen cloth from the Warring States Period was unearthed in Changsha, with a warp density of 28 threads per centimeter and a weft thread density of 24 threads per centimeter, which is tighter than the current fine cotton cloth with 24 threads per centimeter.Such fine linen yarn cannot be spun with a spindle, and it is only possible after the spinning wheel appeared.It is speculated that the spinning wheel appeared around the Warring States period. In ancient times, the spinning wheel was also called the wheeling wheel, weft wheel or 繀〔sui〕 wheel. Except for the different names in different places, it was mainly related to the different uses of the spinning wheel. Some were used for twisting threads, and some were used for winding Weft, and some are used for twisting and drafting.The earlier images of spinning wheels were all found in the Han Dynasty. In 1976, a silk painting unearthed from the tomb of the Western Han Dynasty in Yinque Mountain, Linyi, Shandong Province, shows the image of a woman operating a hand spinning wheel. In 1952, a piece of Han Dynasty portrait stone unearthed in Longyangdian, Teng County, Shandong Province, was engraved with several vivid figures, who were operating beside spinning wheels, looms and reeling machines.In addition to the above two kinds of cultural relics, many Han Dynasty stone reliefs were found with spinning wheels engraved on them.These unearthed stone portraits of the Han Dynasty fully demonstrate the active scene of textile production in the Han Dynasty. From them, we can see that the application of the spinning wheel was quite popular in the Han Dynasty, and it is also reasonable to infer that the appearance of the spinning wheel should be long before the Han Dynasty.

The common hand spinning wheel in ancient times is composed of four parts: wooden frame, spindle, rope wheel and handle (Figure 14).The wooden frame is composed of two wooden frames connected together in a ┻┻ shape.The spindle is made of bamboo or wood, one end of which is inserted between the two columns of the small wooden frame on the left, and the other end sticks out of the wooden column.The inner end of the column is covered with the rope coming from the sheave, and the outer end of the column is covered with bamboo or reed tubes.The structure of the rope wheel is to form two rings with two pieces of bamboo or wood. The distance between the two is 20-25 cm. Cross-climbing into a drum shape; the diameter of the sheave, depending on the fiber to be spun, is generally between 60 and 150 cm.It rests on a wooden frame on the right, with strings attached to the spindle and handles attached to the axle.In addition, there is also a hand-operated multi-spindle spinning wheel in which the spindles are mounted on the sheave.The earlier shape of this kind of spinning wheel can be seen in Song Dynasty's "Nv Xiaojing Tu" and "Spinning Wheel Tu". From the picture, the wheel axle of the spinning wheel is fixed with a star-shaped wooden board, and the spindle is installed on it and protrudes from the reverse side. A string connects the sheave to the spindle.Since the installation direction of the spindle is opposite to that of the handle, two people are required to cooperate in the operation; one person shakes the wooden wheel by hand to drive the spindle to rotate, and one person guides the fiber by hand in front.Compared with the spinning wheel mentioned above, it has a longer twisted and drawn line segment, so it is generally used to process yarns with high quality requirements or larger twists.

Compared with the spindle, the hand spinning wheel not only has higher production efficiency, but also can twist with high quality and produce silk or strings with different thickness requirements according to the characteristics of the spun yarn. In 1972, a musical instrument named Hanse was unearthed from the Mawangdui Han Tomb in Changsha.These strings are divided into three groups by the three tails, namely the outer nine strings, the middle seven strings and the inner nine strings, the thickest of which has a diameter of 1.9 mm, and gradually decreases to the thinnest of 0.5 mm.In order to produce an accurate and harmonious rhythm, each string is processed extremely evenly, which is difficult to process to such an extent without spinning tools such as spinning wheels.

Because of its simple structure and easy operation, the hand spinning wheel has been widely used by people of all ethnic groups in my country since its appearance. Even after the pedal spinning wheel was widely used, it has not been eliminated and has been passed down to this day. The pedal spinning wheel was developed on the basis of the hand spinning wheel. Although it has the same function as the hand spinning wheel, the former has improved in structure.The prime mover of the pedal spinning wheel comes from the feet rather than the hands.The force exerted by the feet drives the sheave and the spindle to make a continuous circular motion through the additional transmission parts such as pedals, convex nails and cranks, so that the spinning woman's right hand used to shake the spinning wheel is freed, and she uses both hands to carry out the spinning. The operation of spinning or weaving.The pedal spinning wheel not only makes up for the fact that the hand spinning wheel only uses one hand for spinning, it is difficult to control fine and short fibers, such as silk flocks or short filaments, and the fibers are easy to kink with each other during spinning, resulting in uneven yarn thickness. Defects also greatly increase production efficiency.

The earliest appearance time of the pedal spinning wheel remains to be investigated. Among the ancient documents that can be seen now, the earliest information about it is Gu Kaizhi, a famous painter in the Eastern Jin Dynasty in my country from the 4th to 5th centuries AD. "Painting picture.Although the original picture has been lost, there are reprinted copies in the past dynasties.Later, in Yuan Dynasty Wang Zhen's "Nongshu", Ming Dynasty Xu Guangqi's "Nongzheng Quanshu", and Qing Dynasty Chu Hua's "Kapok Pu", there were also three pedal cotton spinning wheels and five pedal hemp spinning wheels respectively, proving that Pedal spinning wheels have been widely used since the Eastern Jin Dynasty. Judging from the graphics of pedal spinning wheels drawn in various ancient books, except for slight differences in the diameter of the sheave and the number of spindles, all kinds of spinning wheels are basically the same in shape and structure, and they are all composed of spinning and pedal mechanisms.The spinning mechanism is similar to the hand-operated spinning wheel, with parts such as spindles, sheaves, and strings; the pedal mechanism has parts such as cranks, pedals, and convex nails.The crank is mounted on the axle of the sheave and is connected with the left end of the lower pedal rod by a short connecting rod.The right end of the pedal rod is connected with the convex nail.When the left and right sides of the pedal rod are stepped on alternately by both feet, the power arm of the pedal rod with the convex nail fulcrum as the boundary rotates in a conical track in the opposite direction, and drives the sheave and the spindle to rotate counterclockwise through the crank. Complete the twisting and drafting work. The diameter of the sheave on the spinning wheel and the number of spindles are determined by the properties of the fibers being spun.If the hemp fiber does not need to be drawn, the diameter of the wheel can be increased as much as possible and the number of spindles can be as large as five when twisting the thread; while the spindle speed and the number of spindles are limited by the sufficient drafting conditions of the fiber when spinning cotton , can not be too high, so the wheel diameter is small, the maximum number of spindles is three.Huang Daopo reformed the spinning wheel to make it suitable for spinning cotton, starting from changing the wheel diameter and the number of spindles. Wang Zhen's "Nong Shu" divided the spinning wheel into a kapok spinning wheel for spinning cotton and a small spinning wheel for spinning hemp. During the Tang and Song Dynasties, due to the great development of social economy and commodity trade, the social demand for textiles increased greatly, and many laborers who broke away from agricultural production and specialized in hand-woven textile production appeared.Spinning with the original hand spinning wheel and pedal spinning wheel can no longer meet the needs of the market and professional production. How to improve the spinning productivity has become an urgent technical problem to be solved by the society. Therefore, on the basis of various handed down spinning machines In the past, a large spinning wheel with dozens of spindles gradually came into being.The origin and creation of this spinning wheel lack clear records in ancient documents, and its shape was not included in Wang Zhen's "Nongshu" until the Yuan Dynasty.It should be pointed out that it generally took a long time for a technology to be widely used in ancient times. Judging from the fact that the "hometown of hemp and ramie in the Central Plains" mentioned by Wang Zhen used large spinning wheels, its appearance time Probably in the Northern Song Dynasty or earlier (Figure 15). Regarding the structure of the spinning wheel, there are text descriptions and drawings in Wang Zhen's "Nongshu".Although the text in the book is too simple and the drawings are not true, it cannot reflect the original appearance of the spinning wheel well, but we can still get a rough idea of ​​its appearance after careful analysis.According to Wang Zhen's "Nongshu" analysis of the structure of the large spinning wheel, the structure of the large spinning wheel can be divided into three parts: twisting and winding, transmission and prime mover.The twisting and winding part is composed of frame, spindle, yarn guide rod and yarn frame and other parts. The 32 spindles are basically driven by the principle of pedal spinning wheel, and the rotation is driven by the collective transmission of ropes; the transmission part is driven by the transmission Composed of the spindle and the transmission yarn frame, they are the main parts to complete the twisting and winding of the twine; the driving part is slightly different with the type of driving force used.The large spinning wheel that first appeared was shaken by manpower. The prime mover was a large round wheel that was the same as the rope wheel of the hand spinning wheel. >The rope wheel is much larger and requires a person to shake it with both hands.Since it is a heavy physical labor to shake the big spinning wheel by human power, later in the areas with rich water resources, water power was used as the driving force to drive the big spinning wheel.The prime mover of the large hydraulic spinning wheel is a water wheel with a large diameter, which is connected to the bamboo wheel on the left side of the large spinning wheel with a wooden shaft. As a result, the bamboo wheel is also driven to rotate to make the big spinning wheel run. The characteristics of the large spinning wheel, especially the water spinning wheel, are different from the original spinning wheel: first, the number of spindles is as many as dozens; second, twisting and winding are carried out at the same time; third, it is driven by natural force.The first two points make the big spinning wheel the embryonic form of modern spinning machinery, suitable for large-scale production.It used to be that the hand-operated spinning wheel or the pedal spinning wheel could spin 1-3 catties of yarn per day at most, while the large spinning wheel could spin 100 catties a day and night. When spinning, it needed to gather a lot of hemp to meet its production capacity. The finished hemp strands are sent to workshops with large spinning wheels, and they are asked to process them on their behalf, which saves a lot of labor.The latter point is a great invention of applying natural force to textile machinery in ancient my country.According to Wang Zhen's "Agricultural Book", the water-turning spinning wheel is located in "the hometown of hemp in the Central Plains, and there are many places near the stream", which shows that this kind of spinning machine has been widely used in my country in the 13th century.The use of water power as the driving force for textile machinery in the West was in the late 18th century, more than four centuries later than China. After the Yuan Dynasty, because the large spinning wheel could only twist and wind the fibers, it did not have the function of drafting, and could not complete the task of drafting and pulling the sliver, so it was not suitable for the needs of cotton spinning. When the main position in clothing began to be replaced by cotton cloth, the number of users began to decrease, but the large spinning wheel, which was equipped with the prototype of modern multi-spindle spinning machinery and adapted to large-scale production, played an indelible role in the history of textile tool development. of.