Comments by "Gaza is not Amalek" (@Ass_of_Amalek) on "The story of the lost ancient fabric" video.

  1. britishers be like
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  2. extremely expensive fabrics are generally washed very little to not damage them. something like muslin could probably hardly be washed or not even washed at all without visible deterioration, becoming uneven. the modern "dry cleaning" industry was invented to clean fabrics without water and with other solvents like volatile hydrocarbons (historically particularly turpentine and naphtha, I think) because most other solvents don't have that effect of water that it softens various fibers, especially cellulose and ceratin (cotton, hemp, linen, and animal hair). that softening makes a water-based washing process, in the process of even the lightest possible agitation to loosen and rinse off dirt (for an expensive fabric, you would agitate as little as possible and instead soak it for longer and of course with effective soaps and such), inevitably shift or even fray fibers, potentially change their length, and when the fabric dries, it inevitably sets in a slightly hardened state in the drying position, which for special fabrics may end up looking identifiably different than a cloth that has never been wet since before the yarn was spun. for example the never washed fabric may have fewer fibers loosely sticking out of its threads, and the preserved smooth roundness of the threads may make them flow more smoothly in the weave, with a previously wet fabric having its threads flatten against each other at the crossing points. there's no putting that toothpaste back in the tube.
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  3. but those are totall different fiber lengths. cotton fibers are the length of the distance of the outside of the fruiting body fluffball to its center, which is in the 1-2 inch range. flax and hemp fibers are made from the plants' stalks, and a single fiber in those is typically over a foot long. however with an appropriately mechanized beating process that doesn't need a minimum stalk length, you could very easily limit the maximum fiber length by cutting the stalks to that length before extracting the fiber.
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