Soap has been on my mind a lot these past few weeks. My internet search history would lead one to believe that I was either a germophobe on the war path, or somebody with a lot of farm animals. But no, I’ve just been a googling fool when it comes to what works best to get all my lovely raw fleece clean. I even started drilling down into things like chemical composition and MSDS sheets to tell you the truth.
All my searching came up with several options – four of which seem to be the standard in the world of at home fleece washing – Dawn dish washing liquid, Unicorn Power Scour, Kookaburra Scour, and Orvus Paste.
What I did first was start looking for Unicorn Power Scour – it seemed to be the most highly recommended, and being my first foray into fleece washing I wanted the right tool for the job. Much searching later, and I found that for a 16 oz bottle I could either get it from the States (with shipping tags in the $25-$45 US range) or from a (very) few sellers in Canada where the shipping was not much better. With our dollar the way it is, and with Canadian shipping what it costs, at the minimum, I’d be spending the same or more than what the product costs as on the shipping, effectively doubling my price. When I broke it down to how much I’d go through (9 lbs of fleece in my possession now, with another 2-4 fleeces coming my way), it became impractical to spend that much.
Also, just a general life rule, I refuse to spend the same or more on shipping than the product I’m purchasing costs. I hate the idea and I’m stubborn and refuse to do it.
I grabbed a few handfuls of fleece – just enough to test the waters, so to speak, and see what the process was like.
Now, there are a lot better how-tos on the internet than what I could possibly write out here since I have the barest minimum of knowledge when it comes to fleece washing, so I’m going to forgo that (scroll to the bottom to check out the links that helped me), so rather than how-to, I’m going to talk more about my experience.
Dawn was… OK. It did, eventually, get my fleece clean and the lanolin out – and the fleeces I’m working with are extremely clean to begin with. I did two scours, and then four rinses just to get all the suds out. I was hyper aware that the water would suds up, and even barely moving the locks in the water at all produced quite a bit of sudsing that I found cumbersome to rinse. I can see how using Dawn for smaller amounts of fleece would be a reasonable thing to do for processing a few pounds a year – but I’m looking at twenty plus pounds this year alone, and that amount of rinsing wasn’t going to be practical for me.
I also looked at just how much Dawn I had to use on the small amount of fibre I was processing – it came out to a little shy of a full cup at 50C degree water and about two 10L washes. Taking that into account, it wasn’t really cheaper than any of the other options. It wouldn’t take long to go through a whole lot of Dawn.
Kookaburra seemed like the next option, but again, with shipping and even fewer sellers than Unicorn, that ruled that out almost immediately.
Which leaves Orvus. Fortunately, I live in a province that has a lot of agriculture and ranching (a lot). I thought I’d be able to find some in the city (we have a few tack shops not far from me), but no, I’m a bit too urban for that. Fortunately, my mom the hero lives more rurally, and hit up a local farm shop on her way into the city. For less than $60, I got my hands on the most giant bottle of Orvus paste ever, which should last me not only the twenty or so pounds I have planned for this year, but will probably outlive me.
Despite the fact that Orvus Paste says “not for home use” in big bold letters, it is sold for cleaning handmade quilts, and says right on the bottle it’s a good wash for home delicates (mixed messages, much?). What Orvus Paste is actually sold for is for washing horses and cows down, so it’s good at cutting grease and the lanolin on raw wool.
Orvus does have a lathering agent (that’s the sodium lauryl sulfate it says right on the bottle), and it does suds up, but with minimal movement there are fewer, and less dense suds. The other bonus is, it doesn’t leave a scent on my wool like Dawn – when I pulled the second sample scour out with the Orvus, all I had left was a clean sheepy smell, which I love.
I did have to do less rinsing, and I definitely used less actual soap. I did two scours, for a total of 3 tbsp of paste, and then three rinses but I know I could have gotten away with two in all likelihood.
So just practically, since Orvus uses less water and less soap, that’s the one for me. Which is really good news considering I bought so much before I had even tried it. There are a few places online you can purchase smaller amounts (Maiwa in Vancouver is one) if you’d like to try Orvus before getting a huge amount like I did (or if you don’t have access to farm supply shops).
I was going to go over the specifics of how I washed my samples in this post – what I did, water I used, how much soap, etc. I talked about that a bit above, but since this post is already a small novel, I’m going to split that and have that be an upcoming post. I learned quite a bit even just between the first and second sample scours, so I’ll go into all of that in a bit more detail in a new post. Stay tuned!
Lessons Learned
- Preserving the lock – that’s pretty important if I want to prep the way I planned. So definitely pay more attention to that.
- A little Orvus goes a long way.
Helpful This Week
- Wool ‘n Spinning, Episode 65: Washing All The Fleece – I’ve linked to Rachel’s show before, but this one was particularly prescient since I took my first stab at washing this week.
- Wool Scouring – Simple and Mostly Quick – From Beth Smith, this is a really good, practical how to on how to wash at home. I kept coming back to this post, even as I was washing.
- The Art of Scouring – by Kim McKenna/Claddagh Fibre Arts – another really good primer on washing that I went over a few times