Yesterday I finished a wool picker that utilized 3 1/2″ nails set at 90 degrees to the cards on which these were mounted. While the opposing teeth were set closely, this did not work, but only seemed to roll the wool back and forth among the various sets. I worked all day on this and went to bed disgusted. Some of the wool pickers on the internet seemed to only have vertical barbs. This doesn’t work…
Today I cut new wooden cards. Then I used a 1″ grid from the internet to set out a pattern on it, including an offset grid at 1/2″.
In order to drill at an angle dimple the grid at each mark first…this will allow the angled drill bit to bite where you want it to. Here’s my 45 degree template that I made up using scrap plywood/lumber and a small drill press.
This is the result on the wooden cards…
Top cards and bottom cards need to be this far apart if possible > <…
…I may have to adjust these a bit better, but they seemed to work well as is. The nails are sharpened on a low-speed grinder/polisher. They are very sharp. And it worked well!
Here’s the machine at work…
There’s a lot of difference between the loft of picked wool (top) and unpicked wool (bottom)…
And there’s the dirt and dander left behind from picked wool/fibre as well….
