SHEARING COMBS MAKE A DIFFERENCE!
If you're not familiar with sheep shears, the cutting end has a large metal comb screwed to the bottom. This presses against the sheep and the wool sticks up between the teeth. A blade with four sharpened teeth moves back and forth over the top side of the comb, cutting the wool. The major objective in shearing a sheep is to get the wool cut as close to the skin as possible so that you get the longest possible fibers. If you take a couple passes at the sheep, you get about 90% of the length on the first pass and the rest on the second pass. You end up with a nicely trimmed sheep, but those short pieces of fiber, called "second cuts", cause problems. If you comb your wool, they will fall out as waste. If you card the wool, they will stay in, but will cause "pills", little lumps of wool, which show up in the spun yarn.
When we bought our shears, the comb which came with the set was the standard straight comb, the type on the right in the picture above. One of the teeth got broken, the result of an encounter between the moving blade and a wire fence. We had heard that a gathering comb, pictured on the left, was difficult to get used to, but that it did a better job. The flared end teeth were said to gather the wool into the comb as you move it along the sheep. We took a chance and bought one.
The results were amazing; it was like having power steering on the shears, compared to the old style of comb. We got very few second cuts, the job went much faster, and we only had a few very minor nicks on the sheep. We highly recommend trying a gathering comb next time you shear.
Another major help is a back support belt. You've probably seen the clerks wearing them at the lumber yard or feed store. It looks like a nylon cummerbund with suspenders and you'd never imagine that it would do any good. Shearing sheep by the New Zealand method involves a lot of bending and twisting. We used to shear only three sheep per day because after the third one the pain in the lower back was too bad to continue. With the back support belt, there's no major discomfort even after doing several sheep without a break.
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