Mysore Silk
Warp Section:
i) Winding:
The winding process is common for both the making of the warps and the wefts.
ii) Cone Winding:
This section consists of 12 machines. A single cone consists of silk generated through 80-90 cocoons. It takes 4 hours to wind one cone. Therefore two shifts of four hours each are carried out. The machine threads 162 meters of silk onto one cone in 1 minute so evenly that when it goes to the weaving section there are no gaps found in the sarees. 14,800 silk threads are thus wound around one cone.
iii) Warping Machine:
All the cone bobbins are transferred on a semi-automatic warping machine. The warping machine consists a total of 438 bobbins mounted in 34 sections. The bobbins are mounted on sponge discs to prevent erosion of silk threads with the plastic cones that it is wound around. At intervals of every five columns, iron teeth protruding from the top of the columns are present. The silk threads run over these teeth into a perforated structure before the warp rolling machine.
The silk threads from each bobbin make a net like structure and pass through the perforations.
Before passing through the perforations, the machine indicates an error sometimes caused by a loose or cut thread by a red light. The skilled artisans identify immediately as to which thread becomes loose or is cut and fix it by joining both the cut ends or tighten it. A combination of three threads through the perforations combines to form a single thread. Steel rods manually inserted in between the different levels of sets of threads separate the threads to let them intertwine comfortably and alternately to form a net. These threads then pass through minutely spaced steel structures, under a roller and a knot is made to mark one section of the silk threads.
The roller is divided into 5 sections of 9 protrusions each where it is knotted to mark a defined length. When every 900 meters of silk thread, a cut is made and 51/2 meters in length for a saree is made into rolls rolled into newspapers. The waste silk threads that are cut and broken are collected in a cloth under the net structure.
