Fulling
pre-industrial process in making wool fabric
Fulling, also known as tucking or walking (Scots: waukin, hence often spelt waulking in Scottish English), is a step in woollen clothmaking which involves the cleansing of woven cloth (particularly wool) to eliminate (lanolin) oils, dirt, and other impurities, and to make it shrink by friction and pressure. The work delivers a smooth, tightly finished fabric that is insulating and water-repellent. Well-known examples are duffel cloth, first produced in Flanders in the 14th century, and loden, produced in Austria from the 16th century on.
Waulking could be done with the hands and feet. In medieval Europe, it was done in water-powered fulling mills. After the Industrial Revolution, coal and electric power were used.
Felting refers more generally to the interlocking of loose wool fibers; they need not be spun and woven first.
Process
Fulling involves two processes: scouring (cleaning) and milling (thickening). Removing the oils encourages felting, and the cloth is pounded to clean it and to encourage the fibers to felt, so in practice the processes overlap.
Scouring
Urine was so important to the fulling business that it was taxed in Ancient Rome.
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This entry incorporates text from “Fulling” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.