Combing

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Combing is a step in preparing carded fiber for spinning. It lines up the fibers in the same direction and removes short fibers, giving you a smoother, stronger, and more lustrous yarn. Gilling often accompanies combing to even out the top so it is ready for spinning. The combing action uses a comb with pins or teeth to pull out the short fibers; the fibers that remain are called the top and lie straight and parallel.

In wool, the short fibers that are removed are called noils and are often used to make shoddy. There are two main ways to prepare fiber for yarn: worsted and woollen. In worsted spinning, short fibers are removed by combing and the top is prepared by gilling. In woollen spinning, short fibers are kept, and combing may or may not be used.

Combing comes in two main styles: linear (often called the French comb) and circular (older designs like the Noble comb). Today, the linear French system is the most common because it combs along the full length of the fiber. The circular Noble system is less efficient and is used only in special cases. A top comb with very fine teeth is used to block contaminants from entering the fiber stream. After several passes, the combed fibers are formed into a overlapped tuft and then twisted into a combed sliver. That sliver is usually too weak to spin, so it must go through gilling again to loosen and irregularize the fiber ends before spinning.

Combing produces fiber that is suitable for worsted yarns; woollen yarns are typically made from carded fiber. Cotton is combed to achieve high-quality fabrics, with contaminants and short fibers filtered out to improve yarn quality. Since combing is a mechanical process, it can miss contaminants that look like the fiber, so some manual finishing may still be needed.

Historically there were two main combing approaches—the Noble (circular) and the French (linear). Today the French system is dominant because it covers the full length of the fiber and works well across different fibers. In cotton, scaled versions of the rectilinear comb are used to match fiber length, and flax is processed with similar principles.

Ongoing developments in combing include improved theory, modeling, and drive designs to make the process more efficient and adaptable to different fibers.