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Spinning count is a measure of fiber fineness and distribution developed by the English, defined as the number of hanks of yarn that can be spun from a pound of wool. A hank of wool is 560 yards long, so in theory a pound of 62s wool could produce 34,720 yards of yarn. A higher count means finer fiber that can be spun finer. Because average fiber diameter can now be measured directly in a laboratory, spinning count is being replaced in modern specifications by diameter in micrometers together with distribution expressed in standard deviations for greater precision.
Spinning count is a measure of fiber fineness and distribution developed by the English. It is defined as the number of hanks of yarn that can be spun from a pound of wool. A hank of wool is 560 yards long (560 yd/lb = 1.129 km/kg). In theory a pound of 62s wool could produce 34720 yards of yarn.
As it is now a relative simple matter to measure the average fiber diameter and distribution, spinning count is being replaced with the specification of average fiber diameter in micrometers and fiber distribution in standard deviations.
In statistics, the standard deviation (SD, also represented by the lower case Greek letter sigma σ for the population standard deviation or the Latin letter s for the sample standard deviation) is a measure of the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of values. A low standard deviation indicates that the values tend to be close to the mean (also called the expected value) of the set, while a high standard deviation indicates that the values are spread out over a wider range.
References
Ricketts, G. E. (1 Jun 1993). Management Guidelines for Efficient Sheep Production. DIANE Publishing, 63. ISBN 0-7881-8286-2.
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Spinning count does not measure a finished yarn directly. It grades the wool itself, by fineness and distribution, in terms of what a spinner could do with it. Developed by the English, it is defined as the number of hanks of yarn that can be spun from a pound of wool. The hank in this system is fixed at 560 yards. One pound that yields just one hank is a count of 1s; one pound fine enough to be drawn out into 62 hanks is 62s. The arithmetic is deliberately plain: multiply the count by 560 to get total yards per pound. For 62s wool, that gives 34,720 yards from a single pound in theory. The higher the count, the finer the fiber must be, because only fine, even fiber can be attenuated into so much length without breaking.
That indirectness was a strength in a trade that bought and sold wool by handling it. A grader who could not measure individual fibers in micrometers could still judge, from experience, how fine a fleece lot would spin, and the count gave buyers, sellers and spinners a shared shorthand for that judgment. A lot described as 62s carried an immediate promise about the yarn it could become: its fineness, its likely softness in cloth, and the class of goods it suited. Coarser counts pointed toward heavier, hardier yarns. The count therefore linked the farm and the sorting table to the spinning room, translating a property of raw fiber - fineness and how evenly that fineness is distributed - into a production forecast everyone in the chain could use.
The system is now being replaced for a straightforward reason: the property it estimated can be measured directly. It is now a relatively simple matter to measure the average fiber diameter and distribution, so specification is shifting to average fiber diameter in micrometers, with fiber distribution expressed in standard deviations. A low standard deviation indicates that values tend to be close to the mean, while a high standard deviation indicates that values are spread out over a wider range. For wool, that spread matters as much as the average: two lots with the same mean diameter can spin and feel differently if one is uniform and the other mixes fine and coarse fibers.
The change is one of precision, not of purpose. Spinning count, diameter in micrometers and standard deviation all try to answer the same commercial questions: how fine is this fiber, how consistent is it, and what yarn can reliably be made from it? The older English count survives in trade language and in breed and fleece descriptions because it is compact and historically embedded, and you will still meet grades written with the familiar s, such as 62s. When you do, translate it back to hanks: count times 560 yards per pound. That simple conversion recovers exactly what the number was always claiming - the length of yarn hidden, in theory, inside a pound of wool.
Spinning count is a measure of fiber fineness and distribution developed by the English. It is defined as the number of hanks of yarn that can be spun from a pound of wool.
A hank of wool is 560 yards long. That means 560 yards per pound equals one count, or 1.129 kilometers per kilogram in metric terms.
In theory a pound of 62s wool could produce 34,720 yards of yarn, which is 62 hanks multiplied by 560 yards per hank.