Weird Webbing Words

It’s time for a bit of fun and after the last two years of election campaigning, we all can use some. Every industry has words that are unique to it and some times they leave you scratching your head wondering how they were ever adopted. The webbing world has a few to add to the list.

  • Crock– not a pot, oops being from Washington pot has other meanings here. This is not a device for cooking or a load of malarkey but a test for colorfastness.
    Determines the amount of color transferred from the surface of colored textile material to other surfaces by rubbing.

    • Sample is placed on crock-meter
    • A 100% cotton white fabric cloth is rubbed across the sample 10 times in the wet and dry state
    • The cotton cloth is evaluated for staining
      So in order to do crock testing you need a crock-meter and now I had better quit while I am ahead! Just in case you want to see a video of a crock test here you go. Be careful, it’s not very exciting.


  • Denier- yes this is the correct spelling, the word is not dinner or diner. Like tex ( see below) denier refers to the weight or thickness of yarn. I see it used mostly when describing fabric weights. Some of the coated fabrics we use are 600d (the small ‘d’ is the abbreviation for denier) and other heavier ones are 1000d.
    A unit of weight by which the fineness of silk, rayon, or nylon yarn is measured, equal to the weight in grams of 9,000 meters of the yarn and often used to describe the thickness of hosiery.


  • Greige– possibly the worst looking word on the list. Some say it is a color that is between gray and beige. Most likely a relative of sepia, another one of those colors that is different to each individual. Don’t go telling a printer that you want sepia colored type on your business card. You will drive him/her to drink.
    In the webbing world it refers to unfinished goods; not fully processed; neither bleached or dyed.


  • Tex– obviously a misspelling by my grandson, it should be T-Rex but kids these days shorten everything.
    Or it is a way of measuring thread size-
    The Tex standard uses 1,000 meters of thread per gram as the starting point. This means if 1,000 meters of thread weighs one gram, it is Tex 1. If 1,000 meters of thread weighs 25 grams, it is Tex 25.
    On most of our straps we use Tex 90 threads when sewing, for some heavier jobs we use Tex 135 thread.


  • Warp– to move (a ship) along by hauling on a rope attached to a stationary object on shore or-
    (in weaving) the threads on a loom over and under which other threads (the weft) are passed to make cloth.


  • Weft– not a misspelling. While the Warp threads go lengthwise is a piece of fabric the Weft threads go left to right, or as I was taught- weft to right.

  • Woof– again this word has specific meanings here in Washington being the home of the Husky’s. Woof is what their mascot says, or a bunch of fans tailgating prior to a game. What does it have to do with webbing, nothing but it really sounds like it should be in the list.