Abstract
A wide variation in absolute shrinkage characteristics of wool tops is found after treatment with oxidative shrink-resist reagents under given sets of conditions. This is not related to the quality of the wool, and the response of any one batch of tops to shrink-resist treatment is unpredictable.
At least two factors can cause these variations, one being the felting property of the original top and the other being the quantity of contaminant on the surface of the wool fibers. If the surface contamination is always reduced to 0.2% to 0.3% by prescouring the tops, then the same degree of shrink resistance, relative to the corresponding untreated top, is usually obtained for the given shrink-resist conditions. However, the absolute shrinkages, although often considerably better than those obtained on unscoured tops, can still vary over wide limits.
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