Schappe spinning

To recover the silk, the pupae are killed with steam or hot air. By immersing the cocoons in hot water, the silk glue is softened. Rotating brushes catch the end of the silk fiber and 4-10 of the threads are wound together onto a reel and dried. Of the 3 000-4 000 m of thread per cocoon, only about 90 m can be unwound. The outer and inner layers are too impure and are used along with damaged cocoons in schappe spinning. 

In industrial production, the silkworm is grown on trays, and the larvae are fed with freshly harvested mulberry tree leaves. Thirty grams of eggs (40000-60000) consume one ton of leaves in the 35 days of their life time. The pupae contained in the cocoons are killed by steam. In the filature (reeling plant), the cocoons are treated with hot water, whereby they are opened to show reelable thread ends. The continuous filaments (up to 3000 m long) are wound onto a hank, which is finally dried. Wastes are used either as spun yams (schappe) or bourette silk, which is made from the wastes of schappe spinning. Dead pupae are used as fish feed. 

Both degumming and partial degumming are only suitable for reeled silk (greige). These finishing processes are insignificant where schappe and bourette silks are concerned, since these are freed from their gum in the early stages of preparation before spinning [66]. 

Waste silk and parts of the cocoon not suitable for reeling may be processed into staple fiber yarns according to the schappe or bourette spinning method, depending on their staple length. These procedures are similar to the worsted yarn process or the woolen spinning process (Chapter 3). 

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See also in sourсe #XX -- [ ]

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