The New Mill

After much heaving, hauling, tinkering and many long hours, our new mill is finally up and running!

No time has been wasted in getting back into production. With our efficient new layout, everything is running more smoothly

Here, James is hard at work carding some natural grey Gotland (it is SO lovely!)

After carding, the fibre is put through the gill box. Here the uneven strands that came off the carder are blended and leveled.

Next up, it’s over to the comb where our Gotland is blended even more and made into a stronger and better aligned rope of fibre.

Here it is, off the comb. At this point, it takes some self control to avoid diving in the can…as yet, I have managed to avoid doing so, but I make no promises for the future.

We have left out an image of the draw box, but it is very similar to the roving frame above in that it drafts out the fibre, puts a little twist into it and then winds it onto a bobbin. The large bobbins on top of this machine came off of the draw box. Now, they are being blended, drafted and twisted again by the roving frame. Those little green bobbins are now ready for the spinner!

That’s as far as our Gotland has traveled so far, but hopefully it’s given you a taste of our new mill! We won’t be able to help ourselves sharing more (because it’s just too exciting!)

We are also very excited to be able to say that we have recently been awarded some grant monies which will enable us to purchase a new roving frame next year, so we can quadruple our production. It will also allow us to modify our existing machinery to increase capacity. All in all we be able to run faster and more efficiently and MAKE MORE LOVELY YARN!

Our recent Mill move and expansion has been helped by the grant project which is supported by the Rural Development Programme for England, for which Delta is the Managing Authority, part financed by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development: Europe investing in rural areas. It has been grant funded through the HOTSW LEP REG Programme and delivered by Devon Count Council on behalf of the Heart of the South West (HotSW) Local Enterprise Partnership.