Yes wool puts itself out, thats why often in the past they would use a wool blanket to put out small fires or put out someone who has caught on fire. Very cool
I love how you have to give a bunch of disclaimers before you start😂. I understand why, but at the same time I feel like some people need to give you more credit. I do the burn test all the time and I appreciate that you included the smell explanation because that’s the part I couldn’t remember.
When I was a wee little tot, my mother was getting a "Home Ec" teaching degree. She had a whole unit about burning fiber and had to write a paper about the color, length of flame, smell, etc. I found it fascinating, and I really enjoyed seeing you do something similar.
This was so cool and informative! I felt like I was watching Bill Nye 😂 I always heard that acrylic would burn and melt and that wool would extinguish itself, but that acrylic really went! I believe this video will come to mind any time I use my acrylic blanket around the bonfire. Yikes!
I haven't read all the comments so I don't know if anyone has already said this. If you have an acrylic/wool blend you will actually see that there is part of it that will leave ash and you will still have a melted plastic bead on it. The ash is easier to find if you let the yarn cool enough to handle and then crush the end with your finger and thumb. You should be able to tell if there is more ash or more plastic to tell which is the higher percentage approximation. I teach knit and crochet classes and we get lots of yarn donations from people. Most of the yarn does not have labels, so I do this burn test all the time. I loved watching this video and love seeing all your videos.
There is also a bleach test to determine if fiber (usually in the form of cloth) natural, synthetic, or combined. As I understand it, the bleach will dissolve the natural fibers (that may be just protein fibers) but leave behind the synthetic in an out 24 hours.
love how you were fighting to get the wool fiber to burn! "Wool is flame resistant by nature, making it a good choice for your house. In addition, the following characteristics of wool make it appropriate for usage in our homes: It ignites at a very high temperature of 570-600°C. Wool requires a lot of oxygen to burn because of its high nitrogen and water content. "
Ive seen these tests before but always fun to watch. Makes you think about the fabrics we wear and are in our home. How will they respond to fire. Carpets used to be made of wool, now they are all acrylic. The acrylic fibers in our homes make home fires burn hotter and quicker and be more dangerous.
Wool, silk, hair, feather, fingernails and spider webs are all made of keratin, so they have all similar smells when burnt! in Tuscany we call it "puzzo di cacchione" that is the point of the feather that comes out of the skin of birds. That's because we usually smell it when the chickens are... prepared to be eaten, and the skin is seared with an open flame to get rid of the remaining feathers... sorry, I grew up and live in the countryside and the same grandma who taught me how to recognize yarn content and fabric content kept chickens as food when I was a kid... I use a lighter to seal the end of acrylic satin ribbons, so they don't fray, for example in books or diaries or when I make ribbons for gifts! I don't let the ribbon catch the flame, or it'll become black, I just get the flame, laterally, close enough for the material to melt clear and seal the edge!
I work at a craft thrift store and we burn test all the time. Threads Magazine, the sewing magazine, has a great burn test downloadable PDF chart that we reference as we test. It's great for unlabeled yarn or mystery fabrics. You don't need nearly as much yarn to tell. A half an inch is plenty. Use tweezers to keep your fingers away from the flame. It's been such a helpful thing for me to be able to spot natural fibers right away, and it helped remove my unhealthy fear of fire.
This video came at the right time. I just started a project with a wool that didn't feel right and I was paranoid I was duped. It is wool, but now I figure its due to being cheap which cheap is why it doesnt feel as good in my hands.
Lol, I'm out at the dog park in Tucson and couldn't hear your cicadas over my cicadas. But I can smell my neighbors fire while you play with fire. It's a little bit meta at the moment.
The cotton burnt surprisingly slowly. I wonder why. When I do flame tests on cotton it goes really really fast. Flax/Hemp burn slower than cotton, and sometimes self extinguish. Linen is sometimes used as a fire retarding material. It’s no surprise the hemp/wool blend didn’t want to burn ! You get a better appreciation of the different residues by touching them directly. The difference between silk (it kinda makes beads) wool (feels a bit like charcoal), and cotton (almost straight powder) is very stark. Also : I think it would have been useful to include more blends and compare, especially to see the difference between a majority wool and a majority acrylic yarn. But I’ve wanted to do my own charts for this for a long time, I might do it finally.
Untreated wool burns exactly like when you have a stray hair come loose and get sizzled in your birthday candles. 😊 I’m wondering (and I don’t have any insider knowledge or anything) if commercially made yarns (like Paton’s and such) use some sort of sizing on wool, to keep all the little woolies together and the friction down while winding. That would explain why it took a bit longer to self extinguish.
Interesting video! I have seen people that buy/ sell antiques use a similar method to distinguish between plastic and ivory or bone, as an on the fly test. A pin or needle is heated with a flame and applied to an inconspicuous area and the odor is used for the test. Obviously this isn’t a great test, since it leaves a small burn dot, but in the right situation it’s useful. Maybe heating something small and applying it to yarn would be a safer test than burning it. Just a thought.
My grandmother, born in the 1890s, was required by her parents to wear a heavy wool dress on the Fourth of July, just in case a spark from the fireworks landed on her!!
I used to do that with fabric when I 1st started sewing years ago. Our clothing teacher taught that in school! They probably wouldn’t do that now! Ha! Though you didn’t burn Mohair, it was once used in race car drivers clothing before flame retardant fibers were available.
Here’s a thought for Ravelry Roulette. I’m going to be knitting my friend a baby blanket and am struggling for inspiration. It would help me out and give me some options!!!
I read something recently by someone who claimed that the Paton's wool she ordered through Amazon didn't feel right, and she was concerned that it might not be authentic wool. This would be a great situation for the burn test! I heard before that wool is a "safer" fiber, also, because it resists burning. We could see how hard it was to keep it going, compared to the others.
Tried the burn test and cant see any difference between synthetic and 100% wool content. The wool I burnt had that same knobbly black ends but was the same result as synthetic blend yarn. Wool is not meant to burn as quickly as synthetic yarn. I have an inherited stash with no labels 😢, I dont know what is what. Maybe will have to rely on my sense of smell and presence of that hard plastic lump.
This is exactly why makers should weigh up the pros (cheap & washable) and cons of using acrylic yarn for blankets and kids clothes (potential for severe burns with melted plastic stuck to skin). It's interesting that shop bought Halloween costumes go through fire retardancy testing, but we don't think to do the same when making kids clothes?
Great Info. Thanks! Learned a lot. There's a Federal regulation on kids PJ's "use of flame retardants" etc. After watching your Burn Test, I'm going to be cautious using acrylic yarns to knit/crochet on wearable clothing.
When I was in cosmetology school back in the day we had a lesson where we did something similar, burning real hair vs synthetic hair that you would use in wigs and extensions. It was a very smelly day in the classroom 😂 Also in the US military, service members are given a dense wool blanket for their bed. Being a wool enthusiast I thought it was a lovely thing to keep them warm. My husband said it's actually for fire safety!
Lanolin is a form of fat, so by itself it's highly flammable. According to the International Wool Textile Organization website, wool is high in nitrogen and water, so that's why it requires more oxygen to burn and it self-extinguishes. It doesn't drip or melt, doesn't stick to skin like acrylic can. It's an important distinction for potholders. If you set a hot pot of food on top of an acrylic potholder, you might end up with melted acrylic on the bottom of your pot. If you accidentally touch part of your oven with a cotton potholder, you might think it has gone out, when it keeps on smoldering and can start a fire later. Non-superwash wool is fine for potholders because it self-extinguishes.
I’m so pleased you did this video I got a box of yarn cones from a factory that was shutting down (for £5 bargain! 😂) I know one is definitely acrylic, 3 are lambs wool (they’re labelled) but I have two mystery lace weight cones I can’t figure out so this is perfect thank you ❤
How interesting video! 😄 I guess linen compares to other cellular yarns. I wonder if there's a difference between a sheep wool, alpaca wool and dog hair (not in sell often yeah, but people do spin yarn from it 😄). Wool definitely seems safe material for the sake of not burning easily.
Yes wool puts itself out, thats why often in the past they would use a wool blanket to put out small fires or put out someone who has caught on fire. Very cool
And fire-fighters wore wool.
Yes, it is naturally flame retardant.
Yes! I was told the Pilgrim women wore wool skirts year round because they were less likely to catch fire while they were cooking.
Scouts use a 90% wool blanket to use around campfires - no other blankets are allowed (around the fire)
This was so interesting!
I love how you have to give a bunch of disclaimers before you start😂. I understand why, but at the same time I feel like some people need to give you more credit. I do the burn test all the time and I appreciate that you included the smell explanation because that’s the part I couldn’t remember.
I thought the same thing with the disclaimers 😂.
Part of me enjoys indulging in the disclaimers. 🤣🤣😘
When I was a wee little tot, my mother was getting a "Home Ec" teaching degree. She had a whole unit about burning fiber and had to write a paper about the color, length of flame, smell, etc. I found it fascinating, and I really enjoyed seeing you do something similar.
Wow wool burns it’s self out. Seems safer than most of the others.
Animal fibre is naturally fire retardant. Super cool!
This was so cool and informative! I felt like I was watching Bill Nye 😂 I always heard that acrylic would burn and melt and that wool would extinguish itself, but that acrylic really went! I believe this video will come to mind any time I use my acrylic blanket around the bonfire. Yikes!
Wool is self extinguishing and does not melt, so it's safer for babies.
Wool is known for being fire resistant. Source my husband he firefighter. So every time i buy more yarn i tell him i'm protecting the house lol.
Wool is considered a self-extinguishing material
I only use superwash wool for baby blankets for that reason, never acrylic!
@@sisterstephanie2557 Acrylic would be really dangerous because not only it keeps the flame, but melts on the spot, so not the ideal, nope!
I haven't read all the comments so I don't know if anyone has already said this. If you have an acrylic/wool blend you will actually see that there is part of it that will leave ash and you will still have a melted plastic bead on it. The ash is easier to find if you let the yarn cool enough to handle and then crush the end with your finger and thumb. You should be able to tell if there is more ash or more plastic to tell which is the higher percentage approximation. I teach knit and crochet classes and we get lots of yarn donations from people. Most of the yarn does not have labels, so I do this burn test all the time. I loved watching this video and love seeing all your videos.
There is also a bleach test to determine if fiber (usually in the form of cloth) natural, synthetic, or combined. As I understand it, the bleach will dissolve the natural fibers (that may be just protein fibers) but leave behind the synthetic in an out 24 hours.
Oops. I typed this right before you mentioned it.
Yup, only the protein fibers.
love how you were fighting to get the wool fiber to burn!
"Wool is flame resistant by nature, making it a good choice for your house. In addition, the following characteristics of wool make it appropriate for usage in our homes: It ignites at a very high temperature of 570-600°C. Wool requires a lot of oxygen to burn because of its high nitrogen and water content. "
Many moons ago, when I was a cadet, we burned snags on our uniforms because they would burn off but not catch fire! I loved watching your burn tests 😁
Ive seen these tests before but always fun to watch. Makes you think about the fabrics we wear and are in our home. How will they respond to fire. Carpets used to be made of wool, now they are all acrylic. The acrylic fibers in our homes make home fires burn hotter and quicker and be more dangerous.
My grandmother taught me this XD... we also do it for fabrics!!!
Wool, silk, hair, feather, fingernails and spider webs are all made of keratin, so they have all similar smells when burnt! in Tuscany we call it "puzzo di cacchione" that is the point of the feather that comes out of the skin of birds.
That's because we usually smell it when the chickens are... prepared to be eaten, and the skin is seared with an open flame to get rid of the remaining feathers... sorry, I grew up and live in the countryside and the same grandma who taught me how to recognize yarn content and fabric content kept chickens as food when I was a kid...
I use a lighter to seal the end of acrylic satin ribbons, so they don't fray, for example in books or diaries or when I make ribbons for gifts! I don't let the ribbon catch the flame, or it'll become black, I just get the flame, laterally, close enough for the material to melt clear and seal the edge!
Well we know what not to wear if we are going to be near a camp fire 🤣
This is such a wonderfully quirky video. I can't believe how enjoyable it was watching yarn burn. We are a funny bunch!
I work at a craft thrift store and we burn test all the time. Threads Magazine, the sewing magazine, has a great burn test downloadable PDF chart that we reference as we test. It's great for unlabeled yarn or mystery fabrics. You don't need nearly as much yarn to tell. A half an inch is plenty. Use tweezers to keep your fingers away from the flame. It's been such a helpful thing for me to be able to spot natural fibers right away, and it helped remove my unhealthy fear of fire.
this was so fun and interesting tayler!!!
Yes!! You're boys will love it. The cross section between art and science is enormous. My grandsons love figuring these questions out.
LOVE all yourr precautions.
Those cicadas sound amazing! So cool (I’m a biologist, can you tell?)
This video came at the right time. I just started a project with a wool that didn't feel right and I was paranoid I was duped. It is wool, but now I figure its due to being cheap which cheap is why it doesnt feel as good in my hands.
It might have been treated with something... interesting.
Lol, I'm out at the dog park in Tucson and couldn't hear your cicadas over my cicadas. But I can smell my neighbors fire while you play with fire. It's a little bit meta at the moment.
It's wonderful that your husband is willing to work with you for your UA-cam endeavors!
The cotton burnt surprisingly slowly. I wonder why. When I do flame tests on cotton it goes really really fast.
Flax/Hemp burn slower than cotton, and sometimes self extinguish. Linen is sometimes used as a fire retarding material.
It’s no surprise the hemp/wool blend didn’t want to burn !
You get a better appreciation of the different residues by touching them directly. The difference between silk (it kinda makes beads) wool (feels a bit like charcoal), and cotton (almost straight powder) is very stark.
Also : I think it would have been useful to include more blends and compare, especially to see the difference between a majority wool and a majority acrylic yarn.
But I’ve wanted to do my own charts for this for a long time, I might do it finally.
Untreated wool burns exactly like when you have a stray hair come loose and get sizzled in your birthday candles. 😊 I’m wondering (and I don’t have any insider knowledge or anything) if commercially made yarns (like Paton’s and such) use some sort of sizing on wool, to keep all the little woolies together and the friction down while winding. That would explain why it took a bit longer to self extinguish.
Interesting video! I have seen people that buy/ sell antiques use a similar method to distinguish between plastic and ivory or bone, as an on the fly test. A pin or needle is heated with a flame and applied to an inconspicuous area and the odor is used for the test. Obviously this isn’t a great test, since it leaves a small burn dot, but in the right situation it’s useful. Maybe heating something small and applying it to yarn would be a safer test than burning it. Just a thought.
My grandmother, born in the 1890s, was required by her parents to wear a heavy wool dress on the Fourth of July, just in case a spark from the fireworks landed on her!!
I used to do that with fabric when I 1st started sewing years ago. Our clothing teacher taught that in school! They probably wouldn’t do that now! Ha! Though you didn’t burn Mohair, it was once used in race car drivers clothing before flame retardant fibers were available.
Here’s a thought for Ravelry Roulette. I’m going to be knitting my friend a baby blanket and am struggling for inspiration. It would help me out and give me some options!!!
Nothing like a good science experiment. And, out in the heat! 🥵
I read something recently by someone who claimed that the Paton's wool she ordered through Amazon didn't feel right, and she was concerned that it might not be authentic wool. This would be a great situation for the burn test! I heard before that wool is a "safer" fiber, also, because it resists burning. We could see how hard it was to keep it going, compared to the others.
Tried the burn test and cant see any difference between synthetic and 100% wool content. The wool I burnt had that same knobbly black ends but was the same result as synthetic blend yarn. Wool is not meant to burn as quickly as synthetic yarn. I have an inherited stash with no labels 😢, I dont know what is what. Maybe will have to rely on my sense of smell and presence of that hard plastic lump.
This an awesome experiment! :) I've always just burned the end of the yarn and rub it between my fingers.
This is exactly why makers should weigh up the pros (cheap & washable) and cons of using acrylic yarn for blankets and kids clothes (potential for severe burns with melted plastic stuck to skin). It's interesting that shop bought Halloween costumes go through fire retardancy testing, but we don't think to do the same when making kids clothes?
Great Info. Thanks! Learned a lot. There's a Federal regulation on kids PJ's "use of flame retardants" etc. After watching your Burn Test, I'm going to be cautious using acrylic yarns to knit/crochet on wearable clothing.
Thanks for doing the test!
When I was in cosmetology school back in the day we had a lesson where we did something similar, burning real hair vs synthetic hair that you would use in wigs and extensions. It was a very smelly day in the classroom 😂
Also in the US military, service members are given a dense wool blanket for their bed. Being a wool enthusiast I thought it was a lovely thing to keep them warm. My husband said it's actually for fire safety!
Thanks so much for this video! I was able to determine the content of some mystery yarn in my stash using the burn method. Genius!
😅 I thought this is for the CE testing that the handmade toy makers have to do in Europe and was going viral for a while.
This was very informative, thank you!
I love this. My Mom had a list of things to do to tell the fiber content of cloth that she had gotten in 4H.
loved this one!! so cool! i literally have a mystery pile of yarn i was trying to figure out, they may be burned!!
So glad this is helpful!
Wool self-extinguishes.
Hi! Thanks for your content! Where did you get your t-shirt?
Thank you! And you can actually find that t-shirt in my merch shop. The link is up in the description. Www.woolneedleshands.com/merch
Lanolin is a form of fat, so by itself it's highly flammable. According to the International Wool Textile Organization website, wool is high in nitrogen and water, so that's why it requires more oxygen to burn and it self-extinguishes. It doesn't drip or melt, doesn't stick to skin like acrylic can. It's an important distinction for potholders. If you set a hot pot of food on top of an acrylic potholder, you might end up with melted acrylic on the bottom of your pot. If you accidentally touch part of your oven with a cotton potholder, you might think it has gone out, when it keeps on smoldering and can start a fire later. Non-superwash wool is fine for potholders because it self-extinguishes.
For science!
I’m so pleased you did this video I got a box of yarn cones from a factory that was shutting down (for £5 bargain! 😂) I know one is definitely acrylic, 3 are lambs wool (they’re labelled) but I have two mystery lace weight cones I can’t figure out so this is perfect thank you ❤
This video was 🔥
We did this as a homeschool project earlier in the year. It was so interesting!
How interesting video! 😄 I guess linen compares to other cellular yarns. I wonder if there's a difference between a sheep wool, alpaca wool and dog hair (not in sell often yeah, but people do spin yarn from it 😄). Wool definitely seems safe material for the sake of not burning easily.
Animal fibres are usually fire-retardant in their natural state. 😊
OMG WHO KNEW
Sub 1 minute!