musings on spindles
Aug. 29th, 2006 18:17![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
piranhai am always impressed by how much in-depth knowledge of small bits that improve any given tool there is in any human specialisation, once one has a closer look.
latest case in point: the lowly drop spindle. its production is not really a high-tech endeavour; very simple, easy to understand principles apply to its construction.
when i get interested in something, i often choose the route that lets me fabricate my own tools -- for one, i feel it gives me a deeper understanding of techniques, and for another, it's cheap. if i were to buy tools for everything that takes my fancy, i'd not be able to crawl out from under all that toolage to work with it, and i'd have to be filthy rich.
so, when i took an interest in spinning, i had a look at pictures of drop spindles and immediately thought, well, how hard can it be to make one myself. not very hard, right?
right. well, sort of. one can certainly make a drop spindle for $2 or less-- a wooden toy wheel or an AOL CD (other junk CDs also work :), a piece of dowel, a cup hook, a bit of fiddling, and you're done. except -- now that i have a professionally made drop spindle in my hands, and have spun for a while on both of them i see in how many ways my homemade one is suboptimal. and it's not like the professional one is a luxury model; it's basic.
the professional spindle (from ashford, NZ -- OMG, my spindle came all the way from NZ, how cool is that? global trade still excites me a lot. :) has a turned shaft, it will remain true for a long time if i take reasonable care of it. my homemade spindle's dowel shaft has slightly warped already (dowels are cut), and the spindle therefore wobbles a bit.
the pro's hook (this is a high whorl spindle with the hook directly in the centre of the whorl) is shaped with a definite peak. my hook is a round cup hook. the yarn settles very easily into the centre of the peak, while on my cup hook it doesn't centre itself all that well, which makes the spindle less stable.
the pro's whorl has two notches cut into the rim perpendicular to the opening of the hook, the homemade is notchless. i lurve those notches. with a drop spindle there's a limit to how much yarn one can spin before one has to stop and wind it onto the spindle, or it'll hit the floor. that sequence of movements needs to be very efficient or it becomes annoying oh-so-quickly. i can do the wind-on and the consequent readying for new spinning much more quickly because of those notches and their placement.
now for a bit of physics. remember angular momentum = mass * velocity * radius? no? :) here's a bit of physics for drop spindlers.
the pro's whorl is located at the very top of the shaft, like my homemade one. this makes the spindle dance a bit, and i think if i'll buy or make another spindle, i'll be picking a design that has the whorl a little further down the shaft, for greater stability. also, the pro's whorl is hollowed out in a ring around the shaft, with only a cm around the edge being solid wood all the way through. this allows the spindle to spin longer, because the location of a weight in relation to the axis of rotation affects starting and stopping effort. the homemade spindle is centre-weighted (the whorl is pretty much the same thickness all around), pro is rim-weighted; ergo pro spins longer. conversely, because of that centre-weight my homemade spindle spins faster (or would, if it were the same weight and didn't wobble), while the pro spins slower -- which at my current level of craftspersonship is a good thing.
i also know my next spindle will have a tapered shaft, because it's easier to remove the cop (the wound-on glob of yarn) that way; it's a bit of a pain with this pro (and the homemade as well).
but i am very happy with the high-whorl approach. i went from cussing with the homemade to actually occasionally feeling a moment of zen with this spindle, and now that i've figured out the mystical "thigh roll" i am getting speedier as well, more speedy than i'd be with a bottom-whorl spindle that needs to be twirled with the fingers -- my RSI doesn't like that.
latest case in point: the lowly drop spindle. its production is not really a high-tech endeavour; very simple, easy to understand principles apply to its construction.
when i get interested in something, i often choose the route that lets me fabricate my own tools -- for one, i feel it gives me a deeper understanding of techniques, and for another, it's cheap. if i were to buy tools for everything that takes my fancy, i'd not be able to crawl out from under all that toolage to work with it, and i'd have to be filthy rich.
so, when i took an interest in spinning, i had a look at pictures of drop spindles and immediately thought, well, how hard can it be to make one myself. not very hard, right?
right. well, sort of. one can certainly make a drop spindle for $2 or less-- a wooden toy wheel or an AOL CD (other junk CDs also work :), a piece of dowel, a cup hook, a bit of fiddling, and you're done. except -- now that i have a professionally made drop spindle in my hands, and have spun for a while on both of them i see in how many ways my homemade one is suboptimal. and it's not like the professional one is a luxury model; it's basic.
the professional spindle (from ashford, NZ -- OMG, my spindle came all the way from NZ, how cool is that? global trade still excites me a lot. :) has a turned shaft, it will remain true for a long time if i take reasonable care of it. my homemade spindle's dowel shaft has slightly warped already (dowels are cut), and the spindle therefore wobbles a bit.
the pro's hook (this is a high whorl spindle with the hook directly in the centre of the whorl) is shaped with a definite peak. my hook is a round cup hook. the yarn settles very easily into the centre of the peak, while on my cup hook it doesn't centre itself all that well, which makes the spindle less stable.
the pro's whorl has two notches cut into the rim perpendicular to the opening of the hook, the homemade is notchless. i lurve those notches. with a drop spindle there's a limit to how much yarn one can spin before one has to stop and wind it onto the spindle, or it'll hit the floor. that sequence of movements needs to be very efficient or it becomes annoying oh-so-quickly. i can do the wind-on and the consequent readying for new spinning much more quickly because of those notches and their placement.
now for a bit of physics. remember angular momentum = mass * velocity * radius? no? :) here's a bit of physics for drop spindlers.
the pro's whorl is located at the very top of the shaft, like my homemade one. this makes the spindle dance a bit, and i think if i'll buy or make another spindle, i'll be picking a design that has the whorl a little further down the shaft, for greater stability. also, the pro's whorl is hollowed out in a ring around the shaft, with only a cm around the edge being solid wood all the way through. this allows the spindle to spin longer, because the location of a weight in relation to the axis of rotation affects starting and stopping effort. the homemade spindle is centre-weighted (the whorl is pretty much the same thickness all around), pro is rim-weighted; ergo pro spins longer. conversely, because of that centre-weight my homemade spindle spins faster (or would, if it were the same weight and didn't wobble), while the pro spins slower -- which at my current level of craftspersonship is a good thing.
 |
ashford drop spindle you can see the rim weighting, and the notch (there is another one directly opposite), and even the peak of the hook. |
i also know my next spindle will have a tapered shaft, because it's easier to remove the cop (the wound-on glob of yarn) that way; it's a bit of a pain with this pro (and the homemade as well).
but i am very happy with the high-whorl approach. i went from cussing with the homemade to actually occasionally feeling a moment of zen with this spindle, and now that i've figured out the mystical "thigh roll" i am getting speedier as well, more speedy than i'd be with a bottom-whorl spindle that needs to be twirled with the fingers -- my RSI doesn't like that.
no subject
on 2006-08-30 02:47 (UTC)I find that removing the cop is made much easier by making little tubes out of toilet paper rolls, halving them longitudinally then taping them back up to make a narrow tube that fits nicely over the shaft. It sits snugly against the whorl when I'm spinning, and I spin the yarn onto that. When I'm done, removing the cop is a simple matter of just breaking the yarn where it attaches to the leader then sliding the whole lot off in one easy movement. I imagine if one were clever one could just slip the tube out of the cop and get a nice tidy ball; I'm not that slick, so I either ply the singles straight off those tubes (sitting in glasses to stop them escaping) or unwind the finished yarn off the tube into a skein for twist-setting in water.
My nice basic Ashford spindle does me quite well, but I confess that I have found myself coveting these: Golding Ring Spindles (http://www.dropspindle.info/dropspindles.html). Described by some as "the Rolls Royce of drop spindles", I think they're gorgeous. I'm thinking I might get one of the small ones in lignum vitae for spinning finer yarn. Such lovely things!
no subject
on 2006-08-30 18:17 (UTC)figures that of all the people on my flist, you would of course be spinning now. so, when are you gonna start breeding rare heritage sheep? *grin*.
the toilet roll idea is -- at once great (thanks!) and unfortunately inelegant, *heh*. i'll probably try it, but it'll feel kludgy.
i spun on a low-whorl spindle at the fair, which was interesting because i had decided on building a high-whorl one after reading about the differences without ever having tried either before. turns out that had been a good decision -- my hand was already unhappy with me before, and twisting the shaft with my fingers wasn't comfortable and would probably quickly become painful. i don't need another thing pissing off my hands.
i have yet to create a good plying setup, because the tension isn't great with just sticking the cops or rewound balls into glasses -- i might run the singles through an eyebolt screwed into the wall or ceiling. and i know i'll be plying this brown yarn i'm spinning, because i dislike knitting with singles. :)
no subject
on 2006-08-30 20:35 (UTC)