Yesterday afternoon, I got to have half an hour of quality time with my favourite hand-spindle - one of my spindle sticks and a whorl that I bought somewhere, ages ago, and that remains my firm favourite for about any hand-spindle spinning tasks I get.

The results? Half an hour of concentrated spinning with spindle (and distaff, naturally, need I even mention that?) yielded 23.5 metres of worsted yarn.

Here's the two little balls of yarn side by side:


Next up: doing the same with my treadled spinning wheels...

I did the first of the spinning output tests yesterday, using the Great Wheel. I had settled on trying for half an hour spinning for each test, and that was quite enough for untrained me on the Great Wheel.

To have the material as alike as possible I will be using industrially prepared Merino top for all the tests (at least four of them, one with each spinning implement). That is, naturally, nothing really spinn-able for the Great One, so I transformed a portion of it into rolags for long-draw first, using my hand-cards.

And the result of half an hour spinning were 64.5 m of yarn (which would add up to 129 m per hour). I aimed for rather thin yarn (to match what I will be doing with the other tools) and for rather high twist (since that is historically more correct than low twist), and once the spinning tests are all done, I plan on plying each sample to have them in a more stable condition - I want to take them with me for demonstrations.

So. When you are reading this, please keep in mind that they are all very, very squishy figures - it's just one spinner, my tools and their quality are unknown to you as is my proficiency with each tool, and you only have my word that the wheel is functioning quite well and that I have not had much practice at all yet with the Great Wheel. (All of which, by the way, are reasons this post is not labeled Experimental Archaeology!)

A good while ago, I posted about the time I needed to ply close to 600 m of yarn on my old, small foot-driven spinning wheel.

That little wheel, bought during my teenage years, was sold to me as a young girl's spinning wheel. I learned how to use it, I learned a lot about wheels on and through it, I dragged it around and I spun and spun. But it's a small wheel with, accordingly, a rather slow spinning ratio. And with the years, I wanted to spin more strongly twisted yarns, and thin very high-twist yarns, and do so faster than the little wheel would allow me to, even when treadling very fast.

So I started to keep my eyes peeled for a production wheel, and finally decided to buy a double-drive wheel, second-hand, from a Finnish producer who had long gone out of business. And this weekend, I started tuning it - replacing the whorl with a new, much smaller one (thus upping the ratio from drive wheel to whorl) and glueing additional discs to the spool to bring that ratio up too and really close to the whorl ratio. (Really close, in my case, meaning nominally1:1 for the bigger of the new discs and almost 1:1 for the smaller one.) The fastest setting needs a little more running in, or a little more tweaking, but it does work already, and the slower setting works really nicely already and will yield a spinning output of high-twist yarn, my usual thickness, of about 120 m/hour according to my first tests. Spinning output, that is, not plying output. And I am planning on doing those speed tests... soon.

I have done some more spinning on the Great Wheel (because I can, and because it's fun, and because it's set up for a little spinning video to be made one of these days), some more carding (now I know two totally different but both functioning techniques for carding wool, and trying to find out which one suits me better) and the usual paperwork stuff besides.

Spinning time is limited by the amount of spinning my arms can take. They have not yet completely recovered from Saturday night, which is not helped by me going at it again and again. But hey, I'm having fun, it counts as training, and I so enjoy having a smoothly running spindle wheel! All this has brought me to think that I should do a test - use pre-prepared wool rolags or top and try spinning normal type and thickness thread for an hour each on the spindle, my two treadle wheels and the Great Wheel and see how the three compare. That's not going to happen during the next two weeks though - before I do that comparison, I will have to get better acquainted with my newer treadle wheel and be sure I can do one hour non-stop on the Great Wheel. It should be a fun, and enlightening, test though!

I spent a few hours in the workshop yesterday, having a lot of fun. It's been ages since I last used powered tools extensively, and I still never used them as much as this time around. I can absolutely appreciate the beauty and the special feeling that comes with doing everything the slow way and by hand, but I'd never build a wheel in that way.

And now I'll finish my tea and bumble off to the workshop again, for a little intermezzo: the tablet-weaving "loom" is on today's agenda. And maybe I'll even remember to take some pictures...

Finally, all things necessary have come together: The wood that I need, the machines and tools that I need, and the lovely upstairs neighbour with time on his hands to show me how to use the machines. So on the weekend, I started work on the new wool wheel.

As German strategist von Moltke once said, "No battle plan survives contact with the enemy" - I have already made some changes to the plan that I drew in meticulous work. The board that will carry all the rest of the wheel has gotten somewhat slimmer (so that it could fit into the planing machine), and it's not all even (though that does not bother me a bit), and it's about 5 cm shorter than intended originally. But all that is no big deal, since the plan was more or less drawn after a Psalter illumination and part of the plan was to adjust as necessary.

In addition to the wheel, and in some way also to practice some of the procedures, I am also planning to build a crossbar-and-post tablet weaving "loom", which means a run to the hardware store today. And the loom will come in very, very handy for my latest weaving project which will also travel with me to the RGZM in two weeks. Fortunately, the thing is an utterly simple affair... rendered even simpler by my planning on how to build it.

Yesterday saw me working on a few open questions at once in the library in Bamberg, including pondering a few spinning wheel questions. There's a lot of speculation abounding in regard to the output possible on a hand-spindle, on a Great Wheel and on a modern treadled flyer spinning wheel. There are also quite a few (modern) depictions, descriptions and interpretations of the Great Wheel that do not at all fit in with the image I have in mind of that Wheel: a specialised, highly productive tool for the textile industry, with some very specific caveats and disadvantages, but also with a significantly higher rate of output than the spindle.

All these ponderings are not only in connection with the wheel project - a part of them will also find a little space in the presentation for the conference in Vienna. And all this research is finally solving a few questions I had for a long time.

One is yet unsolved, though. How do I attach the wheel rim to the spokes (or vice versa)? I don't want it all to wobble or fall apart, but I also do not want to risk damage when the wood deforms a little due to changing conditions. Input and speculation (or description of how your Great Wheel, should you have one, keeps its rim and spokes together) is very welcome.