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Finishing refers to the treatment
of fabric to improve its properties. Various techniques that may be
applied to narrow fabrics include:
- Basic Finish Treatment or process designed to alter or
improve the surface appearance, function or texture of a fabric.
Examples include: mercerizing, calendering, glazing, moire, napping,
shearing, cropping, embossing, sanding, or beetling.
- Brushing A finishing process for knit or woven fabrics in
which brushes or other abrading devices are used to raise a nap on
fabrics or create a novelty surface texture.
- Calendering A finishing process to increase the
smoothness & luster of fabric. The material is passed between
heated rollers under high pressure. Some calender finishes are
moire, glazed, friction, chased, or water-marked.
- Combing A process for removing all short fibers and
impurities from cotton that has been carded. Combed yarn is superior
to carded yarn in that it is more compact and has fewer projecting
fibers. The finest cottons are made from combed yarns.
- Dry Finishing Those processing which the cloth is handled
in a dry condition. These include perching, measuring, burling,
specking, mending, sewing, calendering, brushing, cropping, friction
calendering, glazing, napping, shearing, gassing, singeing, or
schreinerizing.
- Mercerizing A finishing process used extensively on
cotton yarn and cloth consisting essentially of impregnating the
material with a cold, strong, sodium hydroxide (caustic soda)
solution. The treatment increases the strength and affinity for dyes
and, if done under tension, the luster is greatly increased.
- Schreiner Finish The natural luster of many cloths, such
as cotton-back sateen, sateen, muslin, linene, linon, and lining is
enhanced by a method of milling or pounding called shreinering. The
material is subjected to the physical action of a roller, usually
made of steel, with a great many fine lines per inch engraved in it.
The roller flattens the threads in the cloth and imprints onto the
surface a series of ridges, so fine that it is necessary to use a
microscope to see the fineness of the work. These very fine lines
reflect the rays of light and bring out the appearance by which the
cloth is characteristically known. Some of the finishes allied with
shreinering are frost-shreinerization, imitation schreinerization,
imitation mercerization, bloom finish.
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