NEW Majacraft extra fine hand combs
NEW: EXTRA FINE HAND COMBS
Our second new product to launch is our new Extra Fine hand combs, for all your luxury fibre prep and blending. We have been making hand combs for years, and have our trusted, tried and tested Majacraft method of setting the lovely smooth (not too sharp) tines in place, so they are solidly fixed, will not bend, and stay straight even after years of use. Our standard combs are FINE combs, suitable for anything 18 – 30 micron fibers, wonderful on most Merino, Corriedale, Romney, and other fine to medium fibres.
Our new combs are EXTRA fine, with the tines closer together while still super smooth and reliably straight.
The Extra Fine combs have helped me with my fibre preparation tremendously! I have used the standard Majacraft Fine Hand combs for many years with great success and pleasure, just the right size for my hands, the perfect weight, no injuries, and beautiful fibre. But over time the range of fibres I had in my stash expanded and I developed a taste for very fine fibres, such as beautiful cria alpaca fleece, softest baby camel, and other delightfully soft, very fine micron fleece (12-18micron). Then one day, I added a big bag of the most delicious Polwarth lamb to my stash – gorgeous! However, as lovely as it was, it proved a challenge to prepare for spinning. Washed alone did not deliver the result I wanted, as the staples were not defined and it was quite fluffy. It is also quite a tender fleece, and hand carding produced mostly nepps and not much else. I tried combing it with my standard combs, and it was an improvement but still had more nepps than I would happily want to pull out while spinning.
Enter the Extra Fine hand combs! Magic happened!
The difference was amazing, the Extra Fine combs gave me a beautiful preparation from this tricky fibre, almost no nepps, light and airy, and it spun into a very satisfying two ply yarn. I knitted up a swatch and was struck by how very light and soft the resulting fabric was, my goal now is to prep enough fibre to make a lovely Spring/Autumn weight jersey.
Since then I have also tested these combs with a range of other super fine fibres, including some lovely baby camel, blending it with silk and a touch of 14 micron merino for a magical mix. The combs are easy to handle and make hand combing a breeze.
Some things to know:
The Extra Fine combs can be used to also prepare 18+ micron fibre, however I would not recommend it, there will be more (unnecessary) waste, as these tines are really spaced to be their best with your finest fibres. In hand combing, it really is a case of needing the right tool for the job.
As with all hand combing of fleece, you will get some waste with these combs too. I keep mine and card it into batts for added texture or tweed style yarns.
Choose the standard Majacraft Fine Combs for all your fine to medium micron fibres, and the Extra Fine for your luxury fibres to create beautiful smooth, ready-to-spin preparations.
