Machine and History

Machines And History

Woolinwood Carding is a small home-based fleece carding business – primarily for sheep and alpaca fleeces.

We use a 1937 William Tatum carding machine which was imported into New Zealand by Colin Webby of Mapua, Nelson, in the 1970’s.  The carding machine was made in Rochdale, England, and was used as the sample machine in a felt hat factory.  Jane McConachie purchased the machine from Colin Webby and took it to St Arnaud where she and her family started Rotocard (Rotoiti Carding).  At that stage Rotocard specialised in producing multi-coloured dyed wool and wool/angora blend rovings for craft spinners.

In 1994 Jane Sold RotoCard and this is when the seed was born for us to purchase the business, but alas the time was not right.

There have been a few moves by the Tatum Carder since Colin Webby owned it, And in Early 2017 we have reincarnated the RotoCard Business into Woolinwood Carding and finally given the Machine a name; Introducing RAMOTH (named for Anne McCaffery’s Queen Dragon from her PERN series)

The advantage of our carding machine is that, as it was a sample machine, it is narrower than most and so we can do small quantities of fleece – ideal for the home spinner!