Spinning Speed Ponderings, Part 3.

Drafting speed is the other thing that can limit the spinning speeds you can achieve.

There's different techniques that can be used for drafting, and they will result in slightly different types of yarn. Whether those are easily to tell apart by eye is another question, and it may well depend on individual circumstances.

Technically, if you spin what archaeologists define as "worsted", your fibres are prepared in a way to align them all parallel, and your drafting process is in line with the fibre direction. That will give you a smooth, strong yarn. For woolen yarn, fibres are less strictly aligned, and they are drafted more or less from the side, so they may end up more or less folded in the yarn, or at least not quite as straight as in worsted. This will get you yarn that is a little fluffier and a bit less strong. For spinning woolens on a Great Wheel, I prepare my fibre with cards into rolags, and then I draft from the end of the rolag, which means the fibres are sort-of-parallel to the thread length axis, but not quite as much as in worsted. Most importantly for the drafting, though, you can do a long draw from rolags, which is very quick to do.

A variation of long draw can be done on hand-spindles, and it can also be done on a treadled spinning wheel. While I have personally not fallen in love with any of these variations (yet), they will increase drafting speeds considerably. However, they will not result in a worsted yarn type - so if you are going for that specific kind of yarn, you're still stuck with the "short draw" technique.

When you do long draw, the speed with which you can draft against twist depends, again, on the rotational speed you are getting. Long draw also needs to have something to draft against, whether that is the draw-in pull of your wheel, a fixed spindle tip, or your second hand temporarily holding the yarn. When you are doing short draw, the speed of rotation you have sort of sets a minimum speed you have to get to while drafting, to avoid the twist running into your fibre supply too quickly.

In any case, and whether using short draw or long draw, there's a limit to how quickly you can move. This limit depends on whether you're going for a sprint, that is if you're trying to spin as quickly as possible for 10 or 15 minutes, or if you are going to spin for an hour or two, or even longer, as you will do for production spinning. We'll come to that once more again, later.

Finally, if you have the interrupted process where you wind up in a separate stage, this time will be added to your actual spinning time, regardless of what the limiting factor of that process was. Wind-up time depends on how quickly you release how your thread was secured to the spindle (if there was something securing it), how quickly you wind up (that's the rotation you can achieve for the winding), and how long it takes you to set up for the next make.

On a spindle wheel, it means stopping your rotation in spin direction, un-winding a little bit by reversing rotational direction, then rotation in spinning direction again to wind up. From there, it's a fluid transition to the next make as all you have to do is leading your thread from the winding area to the spindle tip and then drafting again.

On a hand-spindle, you have to undo whatever secured your thread to the spindle tip (unless you were spinning in-hand and have a similar situation to the spindle wheel); unwind a bit to reach your cop, then winding up the yarn while you move the spindle towards the distaff or fibre supply in your hand. Then you need to re-secure your thread to the spindle before the next make. You can shave off some time by practice and efficient handling of the wind-up; if you do not change finger and hand position for winding up as compared to your spinning finger position, that will help. You can also have a hook or spiral notch at the spindle tip which can eliminate the need for a half-hitch, though with practice, making and undoing that hitch also takes only a small amount of time. 

Again, though: There are limits to how fast one can move and do these.