Suint Fermentation Drying Update

Back in 2020 I wrote about my experience washing fleece using suint fermentation and somehow that blog post about a bucket of dirty water has gone on to be the most viewed thing on my blog and something I get asked the most questions about. One year later I wrote about some of my updates to optimise the suint method, including bagging the fleece and having a lidded container, but something I have still struggled with is getting fleece dry in the unpredictable UK weather.

A wet fleece fresh out of either the suint bath (or a tub if you’ve opted to wash it with detergent) can take around 2-4 days to drip dry completely depending on temperature and wind (wool can absorb around 30% of it’s weight in water). If you’re in the midst of a heatwave you can leave the fleece outside for as long as you need, but if rain is forecast, or it’s nearing the end of the summer and you still have one last fleece to dry, you might find yourself as I did, in a cycle of moving partially dried fleece undercover and then laying it out again. It can be quite tricky to squeeze all the water out of a fleece by hand (and depending on the fleece, handling it too much might risk felting). I’ve spoken to some people who use electric spin dryers on low/no heat, but I’m not sure how it would cope with suint water, and it’s not the most sustainable option.

But, thinking along the lines of laundry drying did give me a good idea – why not use a mangle? It can be tricky to find working mangles nowadays with many people using them as decorative garden ornaments, however I was lucky to come across one on Gumtree that had been well looked after, despite being outside. The rollers could do with a sand, the wooden handle is falling to pieces and it’s missing it’s wooden shelves (something on my to-make list), but the moving parts all work and since I planned to put the fleece through the mangle in it’s sack, it wouldn’t get caught on the rollers. Thankfully it worked (I tried two passes through the mangle, but the second didn’t really make much difference) and my drying time was decreased to a day, though I did opt to put the fleece out again the following day just to be on the safe side before storing it away. So, I’m hopeful that next year with the help of my mangle, I’ll be able to get a lot more use out of my suint bath.

Since I’ve been delving into the realm of video making I thought it was about time for another update to my suint process (mangling included):

As ever, let me know in the comments if you have any questions or suint bath tips and tricks of your own to share!

Happy Crafting!