From cotton to towels: Technology speeded up towel making

<i>Seventh in a series</i> By Norris Dearmon For the Kannapolis Citizen Towel weaving is more complicated than sheet weaving. The biggest difference is the fact that there is what is called the ground warp and another warp called the pile warp. The pile warp is located above the loom and creates the terry in the towel. The exception was with the sulzer loom, where the warps were reversed. The jacquard looms have an additional head above the loom, which creates the design in the towel. In the early years, the design was controlled by a large rack of cards with holes in them to create the design. In later years, the electronic system created the design. To create the terry, when the filling went across, the reed came forward and the harness switched. Then two more rows of filling came across close together, and the reed came forward as the pile warp let off, creating the loops in the towel. As the years went by, the environment in the weave rooms improved dramatically. Years ago, they had overhead humidifiers to keep the yarn somewhat damp. The weave rooms were very dirty-looking, with all the excess cotton lint sticking to the looms. The looms would run much better with the humidity. As air conditioning improved, all the Cannon Mills plants were switched to it. The air was then much cleaner, and the equipment ran much better. Creating enough humidity was not a difficult problem with air conditioning. It also eliminated the need for windows. Eventually, better looms were invented to produce material at a much faster speed. The Draper Shuttleless loom came out, and most of the looms at Cannon were switched to those. There were literally thousands of the looms at Plant 1. To replace the shuttle, a tape was used to pull the filling across the loom bed. In one photo accompanying this article, the big round cylinder at the end of the loom held the tape, which went halfway across the loom and met the one from the other side. It pulled the filling across. In the process, it left a raw edge on both sides. In the hemming process, the raw edge was rolled to create a selvage. At first the DSLs were unable to weave a design in the towels. The Cannon Research and Development section invented a head and patented it for use on the DSL looms to weave designs. For that reason, visitors were not allowed to visit those parts of the mill. With the DSLs, the company was better able to quickly make the many qualities and designs the customers wanted and do it on a timely basis. Delivery schedules were always a challenge. When Pillowtex purchased the company, all of the jacquard looms were moved to a plant in Fieldale, Va.. There they made all of the extra-fancy towels. You might say the Cadillac of towels, very expensive. By 1999, the Tsukoma Dobbie Air Jet Looms, invented in Japan, came on the market. Those looms were many times faster than anything Fieldcrest had. Pillowtex then decided to replace the DSLs with the faster looms. They replaced more than 1,000 looms with 200 Air Jets that cost more than $25 million and could produce more material than the DSLs. Both the DSLs and the Air Jets could weave up to four towels wide with woven selvage on both sides. There was a mechanism that cut and tucked the filling between the towels being woven. Naturally, less labor was needed to operate the looms. It was later decided to weave only two towels wide on the Air Jets in order to run the looms much faster. Since the Mill 6 was so successful in its modernization, Pillowtex decided to spend many more millions of dollars modernizing its plant in Columbus, Ga. The production of the cheap towels ended due to overseas competition. The new looms were used to make the finest quality towels using Egyptian long-staple cotton. The looms sometimes had as many as 12 to 16 harnesses to be able to weave the heavy-duty towels with fancy borders. There were several different levels of workers in the weave rooms. In early years, there were smash hands and spare hands. Later, because of improved equipment, they were eliminated. There were a very few relief weavers in case of severe troubles with the looms. There were also off-loom inspectors who constantly walked the aisles looking for trouble in weaving. Then there were always the loom fixers, sweepers and other clean-up workers. All in all, the mills were very efficient, and fewer workers were needed to operate the plants. Debt and extravagance led to the company’s downfall. Norris Dearmon is a member of the Kannapolis History Associates and a volunteer in the Hinson History Room at the Kannapolis Branch of Cabarrus County Public Library.

« Previous Page