Cloth shearers
Cloth shearer is an old craft in the textile industry . The activity of cloth shearing is an important refinement step in the manufacture of fine cloth . It has been done using clippers since the mid-19th century .
While the weavers originally worked from home , the cloth shearers were employed by the cloth merchants and mostly lived and worked in their factories . The first labor disputes against the difficult working conditions are already known from the 18th century, from which the term “trouble” is derived.
With scissors weighing up to 18 kg, the fine remnants of wool fibers protruding from the cloth were cut off until the fabric had a smooth surface. In the middle of the 18th century, a machine called a shear mill was invented in England, which sheared the cloth using water power, so that a cloth cutter could serve four to five tables at the same time. Presumably the scissors did not move and the cloth moved on the cutting table underneath.
Web links
- Cloth shearers from the house books of the Nuremberg Twelve Brothers Foundation.