Ballooning, routeing, chasing & waxing.
I have been following a couple of Facebook sock knitting machine groups for some time and find little mention of yarn lubrication. This, plus the other three items is normally of little importance to the sock machine knitter. Getting them all wrong though when using a difficult yarn or knitting multi ends can be a problem. They are all to do with delivering the yarn to the machine in a smooth stable way and also lubricating the machine. On high speed industrial machines these items can become critical.
In order of importance.
Waxing.
In the old handbooks for these machines Harrison recommended running the yarn over some white wax when winding the yarn onto the bobbins, and The Automatic Knitting Machine Company of Newcastle recommended winding over an oily rag in your hand! All yarns now come ready waxed. One of the top spinners marks each cone with the date it was waxed and recommends rewaxing if not used within 3 months. The reason for waxing is to lubricate all the parts of the machine that the yarn comes into contact with. Waxing also helps the yarn leave the cone smoothly. The amount of wax used is hardly measurable: I bought 1 kilo of wax rings in the 1980's, for my cone to cone winder, and 40years later I still have 600 grams left. I have knitted a difficult kid mohair mixture yarn over these years and every cone is rewaxed before I knit it. Rewaxing makes the machine run better. When winding on a hand winder hold a piece of candle wax in your hand so that just a little goes onto the yarn. The single head cone to cone winder that I use is built to use wax rings.
Chasing & Routeing
Generally the fewer the eyelets the yarn passes through the better. If running two or more yarns each yarn should be kept separate for as long as possible and should go through the same number of eyelets. Chasing is when one of the two or more yarns pulls another one through to the needles out of turn, leaving a small loop of yarn in the fabric. Waxing the yarn makes the yarn travel more smoothly, and helps. Putting the yarn on the floor, creating slightly extra drag on the yarn, helps. I make scarves on two sets of machines, 34 gauge straight bar knitting machines with 22⅔ needles per inch and the old sock machines on 12 and 18 gauge. I choose to only buy one yarn, knitting one end on the fine machine and 3 ends on the sock machine. This enables me to place a reasonable sized order with the spinner.
Ballooning.
This is probably the least important on these slow speed machines. For perfection the cone of yarn should be positioned so that the cone points at the eyelet and at a distance so that the yarn makes a single balloon as it is drawn off the cone. If the cone is further away from the eyelet you get a double balloon which is ok but between the two you may get it changing from one to the other which can create extra drag on the change. The yarn should not be dragging up the side of the cone.
Martin Green