Drum Carder

This is Ann's drum carder. It is made by Ashford from New Zealand and has been very dependable. Other than an occasional drop of oil and semiannual cleaning the fuzz out of the bearings it has required no maintenance. Very well made and more importantly, very well engineered. When too much fuzz builds up around the shafts and starts fouling the bearings partially dismantling is necessary to clear the bearings. I remove the hand crank by taking off the lock nut and threading it off. I then remove five screws that hold on the handle side.

Both of the drums can then be slide off their shaft allowing you to clean out the fuzz. Ann attempted to card some alpaca fiber yesterday. If a person was very careful and watched that tuffs of that very, very fine fiber didn't go wandering down in among the shafts it would probably work fine. If you don't watch carefully your drum carder is soon so tightly bound up that you can barely turn the handle. That results in the carder looking like it does in the second pic.About a third of that fuzz pile shown was jammed around the shafts. As I said, this is a well engineered piece of equipment so 15 minutes was all it took to get it back in business.Ann's spinning wheel is also an Ashford . I would recommend their products based on our experience with these two items.

On a unrelated note, here are a couple pair of mittens Ann's sister knit for us with some of Ann's llama yarn. Warm and soft.Thanks, Mary!