My Dad's Wool Table

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While I know it’s not very interesting to many of you, I needed to get this off my chest, so to speak. I was going to put up a photo of the wool table my father made and which is still in use. However, there were too many terms that would need explaining even if I only told you a little about it. So it’s getting its own discussion. The wooden table has slats. I’m not sure why solid surfaces aren’t used but all wool tables have slats. Once the fleece is off the sheep, the rouseabout ([shearing] shed hand) gathers up the fleece and throws it over the table. It is then ‘skirted’. The ragged bits are removed from round the perimeter of the fleece. There might be dirty, matted wool from around the tail or lots of prickles in the wool under the chin. These would be taken off and put in the ‘pieces’ wool bale, which is branded ‘PCS’. The fleece is then rolled up and the wool classer will check the quality. The best fleeces end up in a bale branded with AAAM. Wool from lambs would go into a separate bale. The farmer has stencils with AAAM, PCS, etc and it was a momentous day when I was allowed to apply the black paint to the stencil to mark the bales.