Still building the wheel

To start with, I contacted a nice lady who has an ebay store with terrific customer reviews, about purchasing silk cocoons. I wanted to make sure I can get them from her all the time. It turns out I can. :) I still can't get a reply from this place in Canada with incredible prices in US dollars. I just want to find out about how much they charge for shipping and handling; criminy.

However, the lady on ebay lives in Oregon. It's not too very far from California, so combine that with her shipping fees(and she only charges $1.25 shipping and handling per item after the first on combined orders), and I have a sneaking suspicion it's a better deal. 30 B-2 cocoons for $2.99 usd, that's a steal at 10 cents a cocoon(comes down to about a buck a hankie). If 24 averages out to 20 grams then 30's around 25 grams. 2 packages will make enough yarn for a pair of glovelets and be enough for me to learn with. After that I can get as many as I need :D She totally keeps them on hand.

On to the wheel. Right now I have ratios from 3:1 to 28:1. I still have to make the flyers and bobbins though. That's just whorl speeds.

Now I'm focused on the base, center post, and treadles. I figured out a simple way to make the treadles work so that the wheel rotates in the direction of the foot you start treadling with. It should also make stopping and reversing and snap too :D.

So now I have to make the base and treadles(so I have something to build up from, though for now I'm using wood and bamboo for the center post :D).

It should be fairly simple. I have a protractor, and since a mitre box won't work with my material on hand, it will have to do for angles.

This should be sweet when complete ;).

Oh, and light weight too, very portable, but simultaniously sturdy :D.

I need to experiment with a wooly winder type flyer. The wooly winder's patented(at least for commercial sales). It only comes in sizes to fit specific brands; and I've read it can have a very jerky motion. I want to make a similair flyer, but it's hook will glide back and forth :D. I guess nobody ever told it's creator that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line ;).

I should patent my design as well, but I'll make it quasi-open source. What I mean is, I don't want anyone but me to profit from it monitarilly, it wouldn't be fair. However; if someone wants to make their own for personal use, I wouldn't stop them or get mad. :)

My knuckle's sore from the slip of a craft knife. OT but true :( Still, I'll keep plugging away.

Oh, almost forgot...Just managed to get the lace pattern right

I nearly forgot to post this, and am wordy as heck, so I don't expect anyone to actually read my blog; not word for word anyway.

I figured out what was wrong with my lace pattern and as soon as I get in the swing of things will finish the socks, but first I have to get my spinning wheel prototype out of my system, or at least to a point where I feel like I need a break.

Naysayers be darned :P

Hi,

Just more of the same except for one big, and I mean really big developement. After studying reams and reams worth of assembly instructions, parts .pdf files and more, I finally think I've figured out how to make a spinning wheel. Tonight I made a simple crankshaft that works smallscale. Now I need to make a larger one to see if it works.

I know I can build a single treadle model(adequate and hey, who's to say not plenty good enough? huh?). What I realy want to build is a double treadle model. Maybe I'll be able to bribe someone into letting me see hi-res photos of theirs from various angles :).

I'm frugal by nature. Refusing to pay $500.00 of money I don't have(heck I don't have even half that for a wheel that won't even fit in my apartment, something to think about); I've decided to not reinvent the wheel, and not pay for a supposedly reinvented one either.

There are only 3 truly key components of a spinning wheel(the rest though important is somewhat optional, because one can pick and choose so much). Obviously the most important component is a wheel. Interestingly enough, a spinning wheel features a bare minimum of 3 wheels. I consider the flywheel and bobbin to be wheels as well as the drive wheel, and one cannot have a wheel without all 3 and let's face it, the whole thing's useless without multiple bobbins! So I count all 3 wheels as a single component. The Mother of All is another key component, but the bobbin and flyer are sort of part of the MOA; and some means of rotating the wheel.

My design features parts easily found at the hardware store, and though I'm not sure, I think the wheel bearing could be fashioned using a skatewheel and bearing. Mine will feature a wheel bearing found at the hardware store for under $10.00. This isn't a production wheel(I don't think it will be anyway), so it doesn't have to be exceptionally efficiant, it need only allow for 2 handed drafting and feeding, something that's at least incredibly difficult to do with a spindle(though I'm making a mechanical spindle while I'm at it).

Nature is the greatest of all inventors. Often humans manage pale immitations, like airplanes, artificial pacemakersl, and the like. Good, great even, but not as great as the originals ;). So why fight it? It's senseless for me, an apartment dweller, to try and ream out thick dowels of wood to make bobbins and flyers. Graciously nature has given the world bamboo. This "wood" is so strong, so smooth, and so beautiful, without any interferance from tools and machinery, that I'll simply use it for making bobbins and the flyer :).

A hook is a hook, is a hook. Why pay a fortune for something that looks exactly like what the hardware store sells for 20 cents? Same thing for springs, they have a wide assortment and okay, they're 40 cents and up, but still?

Wood's easy to come by, and between boxes full of ceylon tea, and planks of balsa and basswood, why pay a fortune for oak or cherry? I can get heavier types of timber from discarded furniture(and indeed, I'm keeping my eye out for a small round table, which I can sand if I have to, for good balance, but I don't need it for the wheel, I just want it for the wheel). Still, for the prototype, I can use lightweight woods because I need to be able to move it all around quickly and easily for adjustments.

It's nearly 7:00am, and after I watch Kill Bill Vol. 2, I'm off to rummage, scavenge, and glean pieces to incorporate into my design. I can purchase all of the parts inexpensively, and I'm pretty sure I'll have a working prototype(in need of tweaks and improvements), by the weekend. Still, I'd love to find a couple of broken kitchen chairs and a wobbly table. The fancy kind, with turned legs and lovely turned spindles on the backs and stuff. The great part is, if it's broken, most folks won't want it, except for pesky woodworkers. Grrrrr, they allways have cordless powertools with them too, the fancy kind by Mikita, hell, they can afford to buy good timber, the bastards :P I'm only kinda joking. Oh, I know, I know, timber's not a decidedly American term. I'm not from Australia, I just think timber sounds so much nicer than wood :).

Back to the drawing board...