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> Relative to existing fabrics such as hemp, silk has at least in other contexts been of value militarily because of its relative strength to weight ratio Silk
by NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
> Relative to existing fabrics such as hemp, silk has at least in other contexts been of value militarily because of its relative strength to weight ratio
Silk's just easier in general. Unlike vegetable fibers, silk can be reeled to yarn/thread directly. With cotton (or wool), there are about 4-6 other processes before you can even get to spinning. Hemp's worse still, I think there's a retting process in there like with linen.
Or perhaps, it's more true that the labor-intensive portions are up front... you're feeding the dumb little worms up to 4 times a day early on, transferring them off of the eaten leaves (so as to avoid disease), and this only lightens up to twice a day later in the lifecycle. And this isn't tapping out a little pinch of food like for a goldfish bowl, they'll often do 10,000 worms at a time just to have some modest quantity of fiber (perhaps enough for 5 or 6 yards of fabric). This ends up being like 60+ lbs of mulberry leaves there at the end.
All told though, I'd much rather raise the worms than sit there for six months trying to card cotton by hand.
- jazzyjackson 2y agoA woman in my local spinning and weaving club took up silk worms as a hobby, spent about 6 months from beginning to end and wound up (lol) with a ~ square foot patch to hang on the wall. Pretty impressive conversion from tree leaves to silk when you think about it.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoMe and my kids are still trying to figure out how to scale it up. We thought we had the right sort of mulberries... first batch starved. Then we tried Samia instead of Bombyx, but every single package would arrive damaged and empty. We've got mulberry seeds going, and we're getting some cuttings for this spring. Even then, you need something like 250+ cocoons for an ounce of silk, so we're not expecting much at first.
- Freak_NL 2y agoWait, why are your packets of seed arriving empty all the time? Customs declaring them exotic and harmful? Mulberry mobsters? Moths in the delivery chain?
- Steven420 2y agoMy guess would be that they came from Amazon
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y agoSilkworm eggs, not seed. Got my refunds. No clue. Domestic, wasn't shipped from overseas or anything, and if it was customs they usually send something saying that they're confiscating the shipment (or so I'm led to believe, I don't often try to smuggle anything). It was a bit weird. They were pretty good about delivering the empty ripped envelopes though.