I made this quick video today not only because I was curious, but because there may be some people on here that find this stuff interesting. I break down linen and ramie thread, literally, so that we can compare fibre length. If you don't have time to watch it, basically, the linen thread has an average fibre length of 25-35 mm with the longest I found being 65 mm and the Ramie has an average thread length of 120 mm and the longest I found was 165 mm. That doesn't necessarily mean ramie is better, as the cabling of the lin cable is more effective and advanced, with three cores comprising two tightly wound cores in each of those cores. The ramie on the other hand has three cores but each core was less tightly wound and only the one core.
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Thank you @Martin CarswelI for the review.
@Leathercraft Masterclass what size thread do you recommend for the leather thickness?
@Martin CarswelI Fantastic post and upload! Was nice to see your findings explained in video format.
I'm excited to try ramie now. I'm wondering since mine is Chinese whether it will be the same quality as your Japanese ramie.
The spool you have reminds me of the shoemakers hemp thread from Abbey England which you can use to attach to boar bristles.
The Lin Cable is saved by it's tight cabling as you mentioned. Any time I've snapped LC it's always a clean break rather than any unravelling, so it's hitting the fibres tensile limit before any fibres are slipping past each other which is good.
I have to mention though that any breakage has been from using too light a thread for the thickness of leather.
Thanks for this, Martin. I didn't have a lot of time to search ... can anyone enlighten us about the working properties of these two ancient textiles?