The ratchet a wool fibre is
A fibre with its scales, and the two strokes of one cycle of agitation. The push is the same in both directions; the distance is not, because the scales resist tip-first motion more than root-first. Every cycle therefore nets a displacement in one direction, and no amount of further agitation undoes it.
3 essays call
felt-ratchet. The drawing above is what it returns with no arguments at all; every
call below passes it something, because a placement that passes nothing draws whichever
member of the family the generator happens to default to rather than the weave its essay
argues about.
Where it is called
Changing this generator changes every one of these figures.
After the loom
The ratchet that makes wool felt
A wool fibre is covered in scales pointing one way, so it slides more easily root-first than tip-first. Agitate it and the motion is symmetric while the result is not — every cycle nets a displacement in one direction, and no amount of further agitation undoes it.
After the loom
Milling holds the cloth a second time
This site's integrity criterion returns exactly the same answer for a melton as for the loose twill it was woven as, and it is right both times. What has changed is that a second network now holds the fabric together, made of migrated fibre rather than of thread crossings — and it is the one that decides whether a cut edge frays.
After the loom
Why felting needs water
Wool felts in a wash and not in a drawer, and the usual explanation is that water lubricates the scales. It does the opposite of that. Water lowers one of wool's two friction coefficients and raises the other, so it widens the gap the ratchet rectifies — and what follows is a saturating function of the ratio, not of either coefficient.