You can’t spin thread from it since the fibers are too short.
But you can use lint for felting.
this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2023
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As someone who spins and felts, the fibers in lint are too short for felting too. Both spinning and felting require the fibers be long enough to tangle and lint is the broken pieces of fibers that have fallen out of threads already. You can get it to stick together like felt but it won't ever be sturdy like a felt because the fibers can't get wrapped around one another or tangled up. Like trying to give dreadlocks to a guy with a buzz cut.
Some people use dryer felt to add color to felted things they have made but I think of lint like the crumbs at the bottom of the cereal box or chip bag.
How does felting work?
Ever rolled lint in your hands and then it shrinks and gets denser? It's kind of like that just more controlled. You're tying a bunch of tiny knots in the fibers and letting friction keep it in place
Interesting. I once came close to renting a house from a felter, but that's the closest I've come to the process.
"Felter? I hardly know her!"
Ive seen thread spun from it before
One use for lint is as a fire starter.
You can just use it as is and light it and it works great.
Or you can soak the lint with Vaseline, then store a small bunch of it into a sandwich Ziploc bag and keep it for emergencies or camping.
Because it's so good as a fire starter ... always check your dryer for excessive accumulation.
Also blow out the duct. So many people don’t even know that’s a thing that needs done. Took me a decade until I learned that, and it was so clogged.
It does work good, but always good to be aware of how much of your clothes are synthetic fibers. Burning that is like burning plastic. Not good for BBQing.
One use for lint is as a fire starter.
General caution, this is true irrespective of your intentions.
Clean your dryer regularly.
Shout-out to the GM of the Aaron's calling me an idiot that doesn't know how to operate a dryer when they sold me one out the door so clogged I'm amazed my house didn't light on fire. Swore up and down they quality checked everything, the 2 hours I spent with that machine open scraping the lint out suggests otherwise.
Yes, I'm still salty about it over a year later.
🎶 Goodness gracious, lint starts a fire 🎶
Started 3 fires in the last week with lint. Great stuff if your kindling is dry. For wet stuff I use homemade napalm (old unleaded + styrofoam).
There are some really good flint and steel survival rods available now. Not the flimsy Scouting ones of yesteryear, but ones with anodized aluminum housings, hardened metal strikers and large diameter flint rods.
Started our winter stove with it the other day and am really happy with it.
The one I have, from a survival perspective, is a little risky, because when configuring them for use they must be taken down into multiple parts, but damn if it doesn’t make huge sparks.
Can you link me an example?
Lint is made of very short fibers. Yarn is held together by friction and tangling between the fibers; if they're too short, it won't hold together. So if you tried to spin lint into a yarn, it would probably just break apart.
Lint makes a great firestarter
I'm the firestarter. Lint ball firestarter.
Ooweeooweeoowee
hey, hey, hey
I'm the self-inflicted fiber detonator
The trap's where the lints collected. Don't forget to clean it.
Good advice which I read in Keith's snarl
Lint balls and Vaseline. You can start a campfire anywhere with that.
The fibers are too short, but you could probably make a neat paper out of it.
Depends on the material- if it’s wool or some other animal hair, it probably could be felted. It’s already halfway there.
Another option is as insulation/batting.
I remember reading about someone who tried that once. He wasn't able to spin thread from the lint.
If I remember correctly, the fibers were too short and frayed to form into threads.
I use mine as firestarter at barbecues- ot did, back when summer still had rain in my area (the only time of year when it gets nice enough to bbq), now there’s a yearly burn ban that spans the entire season
Does burn ban apply to BBQ? I always assumed that's enclosed fire.
In WA it did this year
It does make excellent fire starter material. Add wax to it and wadd it up. Candle wax, paraffin wax, whatever. The little lint wax wads are easy to light and burn for a while.
Dryer lint is basically microplastic if you have synthetic fibres
Doesn't answer your question directly but those short lint fibers can be pushed into a toilet paper roll and made into firestarters that work at the campsite
Kind of related but would it make for good insulation in a jacket?
you would need a magic spider, and those only start to show up once you've consumed enough meth.. although if you're thinking of making clothes from dryer lint, it sounds like you've made a good start on that..