Scouring Wool with Borax and Sodium Carbonate

I had previously tried scouring--degreasing--with just sodium carbonate. Sodium carbonate is also known as soda ash, washing soda, and by the ancient name of natron. Another thing I found out is that natron does not always show up by itself, it is often in combination with other chemicals, one of which is borax.
Sooooo...
Today I am scouring about a pound of wool with a combination of 5 gallons of 180 degree water, 1/2 cup of borax and 1/2 cup of sodium carbonate. I bought the sodium carbonate in the grocery where it was cleverly disguised as a generic equivalent of OxyClean. I put the chemicals in the spider tub and then added the hot water. It foamed nicely, and then I added the wool which was in a mesh laundry bag. I left it in the natron bath for about 20 minutes, poured out the tub into the planter, and rinsed the wool with 2 baths of regular hot tap water. The wool bag is now in the washer on spin. Sodium carbonate is also used in the making of fertilizer, so I'm not too worried about pouring it on the ground. Besides, we just have a lot of weeds growing in it, anyway.

I'm also flicking the locks of the same fleece I've processed earlier.

I put out some more fleece to cold soak for the rest of the day. It gets rid of a LOT of ick, which can just be poured into the planter (more fertilizer). The batch I'm scouring today was cold soaked first. Although the first wash did turn yellow brown, it was not as disgusting as batches where I just straight washed without previously soaking.

Scouring Update

So. The wool I scoured in the soda ash solution is now dry. It does not feel greasy. It smells like a sheep (duh!) and there are still bits of VM and BM stuck in it, which will flick/comb/card out.

I am cold soaking a larger batch on the pool deck now. For this batch, I will use a half cup each of borax and sodium carbonate. I'm going to increase the amount of hot water on this to maybe 3 or 4 gallons on the wash and the rinse, which means using the spider tub.

According to what I've read, ancient natron deposits are not composed entirely of sodium carbonate. Borax and other salts of volcanic origin would be present as well. Natron has been used in a variety of ways from extremely ancient and prehistoric times. I am confident in the historicity of using it to scour wool. The only problem would be whether a particular culture group would have been able to easily obtain the soda.

Scouring with Soda Ash

So...I've been sloooowly scouring (washing) the wool we bought for J2B last year.

A few minutes ago, I put some wool I'd cold soaked out by the pool into a hot tap water bath (2 gallons) with 1/4 cup of soda ash (courtesy of our pool supplies.). I've set the timer for 20 minutes. I don't have any means of weighing the wool. I think it was less than half of a pound's worth...I'm going to say 1/4 pound. We'll see what happens. The wool is in a zippered mesh lingerie bag

We have the house on a water filtration system, so we have soft water running through the pipes and in the pool.

Cold soaking with no soap appears to work fairly well to get rid of the dirt. If I set the tub out in the sun, it gets warm, too. I put this batch of wool in two consecutive cold soak baths of about 5 gallons of water, each.

Ding!
Okay! I just now took the wool out of the soda water and ran a hot tap water bath and put it in to rinse for another 20 minutes. The water from the soda bath looked like very weak tea. Obviously, the cold soak did not get all the dirt out of the wool. Depending on how icky the water looks after this rinse, I may put it in for another 20 minutes on a warm soak and then spin out the water in the machine before hanging it to dry on the back deck.

I picked the wool up off the cement around the pool deck and moved it to the table because the kids are going swimming.

I put half of the remaining wool in the spider tub (it has a spider decal on the side) to cold soak and I changed the water a few minutes ago. Yuck!