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Carpathian fulling mills

A finger on the shaft holds up the hammer arm as far as the edge of the catch. Beyond that, the arm falls on its own.

Diagram: a finger on the shaft and the hammer arm of a fulling mill, side view A finger on a rotating shaft pushes up a catch hanging beneath the wooden arm and raises the arm. When the tip of the finger passes the right-hand edge of the catch, the arm falls on its own, head first, onto the cloth in the trough. The dashed outline shows the position of the arm at the moment contact is broken.
Original diagram, not to scale, not a reconstruction of the fulling mill from Kąty. A arm pivot · B catch · C finger on the shaft · D hammer head · E trough with cloth. Red dot: contact between the finger and the catch.
  1. liftsthe finger holds up the catch
  2. releasescontact broken, the arm falls on its own
  3. strikesthe head touches the cloth

Turn the shaft and stop at the edge

Without JavaScript the drawing shows a single frozen moment: the last angle with support (about 159°). The slider and buttons need JavaScript; a description of the four events in a rotation is below the drawing.

Shaft angle159°
StateSupport
Finger touches catchyes

Support. The tip of the finger (red dot) presses on the underside of the catch and raises the arm. As long as contact lasts, the arm cannot fall.

The bar under the slider shows what happens in which part of the rotation (for finger no. 1): support 125°–159° free fall 160°–182° strike 183°–187° rest of the rotation: at rest The second finger repeats the same 180° later.

Arm deflection
16.7°
Head above the cloth
100%
Time since support was lost
—
Shaft rotation since release
—
Whole fall until it touches the cloth
270 ms and 23° of shaft rotation

“—” means this quantity does not apply to the current state (it is not zero). Head above the cloth: 100% is the height at the moment support is lost.

Operating parameters (model)

Parameters within the model's range: shaft speed from 1 to 40 rpm, running time from 0 to 200 h.

Four events in one rotation

In the drawing: A arm pivot, B catch hanging from the arm, C finger on the shaft (rotating clockwise; the water wheel is outside the frame), D hammer head (resting position), E trough with cloth. Colours mark the roles of the parts, not materials.

1 Support
The tip of the finger presses on the underside of catch B and raises the arm about pivot A. As long as contact lasts, the finger guides the arm.
2 Release
The finger turns along an arc and passes beyond the right-hand edge of the catch. From this angle nothing supports the arm, and only its weight matters.
3 Free fall
The arm turns on its own, in the model with a constant angular acceleration of 8 rad/s² (a conventional value). The fall lasts the same time at any shaft speed, but the shaft turns through a different angle in that time, so the speed changes the width of the red field on the bar.
4 Strike
Head D touches the cloth in trough E. The model does not calculate force, rebound or what happens inside the fibres.

One revolution takes seconds. Cloth does not take seconds.

The rotation shown above is one or two strikes. The thickening of the cloth results from a great many such strikes in wet wool. The calculator below only counts strikes for the assumptions you enter. It does not know how many strikes are enough, and it does not estimate that.

You set the shaft speed and the number of fingers next to the drawing: 14 rpm, 2 fingers.

An example to calculate with. This is not a fulling time; the page does not know that value. Enter 0 to see zero strikes.

Without JavaScript you see an example for 14 rpm, 2 fingers and 8 hours.

  • Fall of the arm after support is lost
    270 ms
  • Interval between strikes of one hammer
    2.1 s
  • One full revolution of the shaft
    4.3 s
  • Assumed running time
    8 h

Logarithmic scale: each vertical line is 10 times more time, from 0.1 s to about 11.6 days. The values come from the model and your assumptions, not from measurement.

Total under these assumptions 13,440 strikes 28 strikes / min

This is the number of strikes for the assumptions above. How many strikes the cloth takes, this page neither decides nor estimates.

One revolution of the shaft in the drawing is 2 strikes, or 0.015% of this number.

The Kąty fulling mill: two places that are easy to confuse

A fulling mill was used to process cloth. Heavy wooden hammers pounded the soaked material in a trough, the fibres drew together and tangled, and the cloth thickened (a general description carried over from V2).

Place of origin

Kąty, a hamlet of Krościenko, the Kotelnica stream

According to the description in the project “Przy wiejskiej drodze” [By the Village Road], the object comes from Kąty and worked on the Kotelnica stream until the end of the 1950s. Source 1

Museum location

Sącz Ethnographic Park, Folk Industry Sector

The voivodeship report for 2019 lists the fulling mill from Krościenko-Kąty among the objects moved and recreated in this sector and describes it as working, water-powered. This is the state according to the report, not today's schedule of demonstrations. Source 2

The museum's description of the Kąty fulling mill links the thick cloth produced in this way with the sewing of highlanders' trousers.

What is missing here. There is no licensed photographic documentation of the Kąty fulling mill and no record of its dimensions, so the drawing is a diagram of the principle (wheel, shaft, cams, hammers: Source 3), not a reconstruction. The comparison photograph from Armley Mills in Leeds shows an object from outside the Carpathians and is only a link (Source 4); it is not embedded on the page.

Limits of the model, changes since V2, and sources

What this model does not claim

  • The dimensions and the shape of the catch and finger are a drawing convention. They are not a measurement of the Kąty fulling mill or of any museum machine.
  • The fall is a free rotation with a constant angular acceleration of 8 rad/s². The value is conventional; the model ignores initial velocity, friction, rebound and the strike itself.
  • The range of 1–40 rpm and 0–200 h is a limit of the model, not historical data.
  • The number of strikes is not a measure of felting. The page gives neither a fulling time nor the number of strikes needed.
  • The cloth drawings are diagrams. There are no photographs of samples and no recording of the sound of a fulling mill.

What changed since V2

  • Kept: shaft rotation 0–359°, angle steps, the calculation of speed × fingers × time (default 14 rpm, 2 fingers), the sources and the reference to the principle from Calderdale.
  • Narrowed the speed range: V2 rejected only speeds equal to or below zero (the field had a max of 100), whereas V3 accepts only 1–40 rpm, because the fall model is defined only for that range. Values below 1 and from 41 to 100 rpm are now rejected with a message.
  • Removed the session strike counter (the result of clicking says nothing about cloth). It was replaced by the share of one revolution in the given number of strikes.
  • Removed the sound synthesis. It carried no knowledge about the fulling mill, and a synthetic thud is not a recording. The rhythm is described in ms, degrees and strikes per minute.
  • Removed the switch between three stages of the fabric and the card with the mill and sawmill. In their place is a fixed “before and after” comparison.
  • Corrected the geometry: V2 did not derive the lift from the shape of the finger, and some readings (mm, “energy”) had no basis. Here the loss of support follows from the position of the tip of the finger relative to the edge of the catch.

Sources (links carried over from V2)

In version V3 the links were not opened or checked again; they need verification before being treated as confirmed.

  1. Muzeum Okręgowe w projekcie „Przy wiejskiej drodze” [District Museum in the project “By the Village Road”]Origin, the Kotelnica stream, end of operation at Kąty, use of the cloth. Status: to be checked.
  2. Małopolska: raport za 2019 rok [Lesser Poland: report for 2019]Moving and recreation of the sector's objects, information on water power. Status: to be checked.
  3. Calderdale Industrial Museum: Water Wheel Challenge PackPage 5: wheel, shaft, cams and fulling hammers; a source for the mechanical principle, not for the layout drawn here. Status: to be checked.
  4. Armley Mills, Leeds: fulling stocks (Wikimedia Commons / Geograph)Comparison photograph, photo by Ashley Dace, 20 December 2013, licence CC BY-SA 2.0. An object from outside the Carpathians. Link only, the image is not embedded. Status: to be checked.