Lazy Kate

 Nothing is more indicative of the loss of traditional technologies for  hand spinning is the loss of  using a "tension box" to control tension when plying. It is an old technology, and it works so much better than any of the modern "Lazy Kate" designs.

The concept is simple; the tension of singles or yarns to be plied is controled by a tension box.  Failure to discuss is on one of the deep errors in The Big Blue Book.  Tension box technology is simple and OLD. With this technology you can ply 2 or 5 or 10 or how ever many plies you need for the yarn you want.  I have used either the tension box from my AVL loom or tension boxes that I made to ply miles and miles of 2-ply, 5-ply, and 10-ply. There are bins of 10-ply Aran yarn and 10-ply sock yarn in my stash. There are bins of 6-ply sock yarn that I made. 

With a tension box, you can ply from side delivery or end delivery yarn packages. Yes, you can ply that fine, woolen weft single that you wound on all those pirns when you  want to repurpose all those singles.  I wind 5,600 ypp worsted singles ( steam blocked) into center pull cakes, and ply it into 5-ply gansey yarn.  I do not have to worry about changes in tension as the effective diameter of bobbins change.

You can make a good tension box by drilling some 1/4th inch holes in a piece of plywood, and sticking lengths of 1/4th" wood dowel in the holes. Some of my tension boxes have been upgraded with pieces of steel rod to act as axels with  less friction. However this did not become an issue, until I was working with a lot (more than 10) of very fine plies (e.g., 30s, 17,000 ypp).  My bobbin rack will hold 144 bobbins on steel axels. The steel axels on my tension box is for convivence and  portability, it is not a necessity,

Alden says use some distance between the yarn sources supplying the plies and the spinning wheel doing the plying. I agree.  However, if you are working with several fine plies, it is well worth steam blocking them first, and it is in the steam blocking step, where the distance really counts. 

I do not write for folks that are happy with the quality of textiles produced by the dilatants in Queen Victoria's Court. I write for folks that want to produce better textiles than anyone else.  

I do not have all the answers. The best I can say  is that I sometimes see paths worth exploring.  

Regarding Footnote 7 in The Big Blue Book, the difference between a silk winding machine, and power driven plying machine, and a DRS clockwork controlled spinning wheel that will allow easy spinning of  45,000 ypp fine singles is a fraction of a silly millimeter. Such measurements can be stored as fine knife cuts on a hardwood  "story board", and transferred from storyboard to storyboard or to a piece of work with fine pointed dividers. LdV was sketching freehand, and such measurements would not be visible - and such would be a closely held trade secret. LdV was not going to let his client's/patron's competitors learn trade secrets.  

Also, wraps of  fine spun singles can act as a standard of measure between various textile working locations. Any location with a spinner that can spin "fines" has a way to measure to the closest 1/8th of a millimeter.  That is all the precision that I need to make the whorls/clockwork that I use to insert 26 tpi which will let me build the (DRS) clockwork I need to rapidly spin fines.

The more I spin fine, the more I think that our (English) system of measure (inches, yards, hanks, pounds) was based on the textile industry and wool. What does a square yard of tightly twill woven from 10s weigh?  I think "rods" and "chains" came out of the needs of land survey.