Revised Geometry

Last spring, as I started using accelerator wheels, the advances came fast and furious.  And then things stabilized for months.  It was a time of learning to use the tool.  After all, while I have seen drawings of such tools, I have never seen such tools actually being used by any other spinner.

Anyway, for the last month, I have had thoughts that the geometry could be better. First trials of first prototype are very promising.  What I had thought to be a reasonable rate of production is clearly the bottom end of the reasonable rates of production that can be easily achieved when the tools are properly adjusted.

In this version, it is about 30" or 36" from the orifice to the drafting hand.  The longer distance between drafting and bobbin allow more distance for the single to "settle", allowing the production of a more uniform yarn.  And, there is slightly more tension in both sets of drive bands, limiting drive band  slippage.  Top  flier speeds did not change much, but speeds of 3,500 rpm are quieter and less effort, so that I am routinely able to spin much faster.  Now, I can hear the movie while spinning 5.600 ypp/ 12 tpi woolen singles at more than 7 yards per minute.  Worsted at that grist goes at ~10 yd/min.

I am surprised at how much a 6" change in geometry changes the system.  I know I should not have been surprised given that even very tiny changes in whorl diameters dramatically change the system.

My two take away lessons from this experiment are 1) the importance of wheel/spinner geometry to yarn quality; and, 2) that a loose and self-adjusting system can run smoother and with less vibration than a system built to feel solid and well built when it is not running, but where vibration generated by the knot in the driveband can propagate through the system.

A system using relatively crude bearing technology can run at flyer/bobbin speeds in excess of 4,000 rpm. It is a matter of isolating and damping vibration.




I am sure that the rubberneckers will take this post to mean that I have not known how to adjust my wheel - despite that fact that I have been spinning twice or 3-times as fast as they have been. Now, if they want to keep up with me, they will need to spin much faster.  Good luck to them.

The Accelerator

Yarns "made up" in the process of tuning the accelerator. From top to bottom, 6-strand cabled fingering weight from 2-ply commercial warp, 5-ply semi-worsted sport weight from Romney, and 5-ply woolen sport weight from Rambouillet.

The beast that spawned them:

Top with Ashford Jumbo flyer used at speeds of 1,600 to 1,000 rpm ( the two skeins of cable were done as one big bobbin full.) And, below is the AA #0 (Competition) flier used at speeds of 2,400 to 4,200 rpm.

The Jumbo flyer has 4 drive whorls.  One would expect that the little 1.75" whorl to give more speed than the 2.75" whorl, but there is so much slippage that it does not. Spinning wheel drive belts slip a great deal. Still with the accelerator, and using the larger whorls, plying/cabling goes about 40% faster than is possible just using the Jumbo Flyer (with a Alden Amos Bumpless drive band to minimize drive band slippage.)  With the stock Ashford drive band, I never got the Jumbo Flyer over ~450 rpm. When plying up gansey yarn at 9 tpi, that is slow!!!!!!!!!

That bobbin of  the AA#0 will hold about 12 grams (0.3 oz. ) of yarn. If one is spinning 40s, that is a neat 560 yards. Amazing how that works out.  With the accelerator, I run it at about the same speed as I did without the accelerator, but I can treadle much slower. This is set up with the flier/bobbin mounted with ball bearings.  A test shows that it will go just as fast using bronze bearings (with more frequent lubrication.)

Why not just go to an e-spinner?  While I do not "count", spinning is very rhythmic, and my cadence sets the beat for everything else.  It took a couple of days to get used to the accelerator, because now my hands have to go twice as fast relative to the cadence.  With an e-spinner, there is no cadence so my hands do not know how fast to move.  

A hank per hour of worsted 10s

(e.g., 560 yards per hour of 5,600 ypp ) is not hard.  It just means spinning ~ 10 yards per minute.  (CF Alden Amos, page 241)   The truth of the matter is that a good flier/bobbing assembly will produce about twice as much yarn per hour as a great wheel with a driven spindle.  Flyer/bobbin wheels displaced great wheels because they were more productive.  Great wheels /driven spindles were easier to make and cheaper, but flyer/bobbin assemblies are faster.

It takes a wheel that goes fast enough, and then, is just a matter of drafting fast enough not break off.  That does take some skill, focus and, concentration.

This means that I am spinning about 8 times faster than was physically possible to spin on the stock, basic Ashford Traditional. The concept of a spinning wheel promises much more speed of spinning than is delivered in modern spinning wheels.  Alden Amos and I modified my Traddy for more speed.

The modifications that Alden Amos and I made to the Ashford design were very minor. We made the flier smaller so that it has less wind resistance, we changed the diameter of the whorls by a few millimeters, we changed the geometry slightly, and we put a pair of inexpensive ball bearings on the flier/bobbin assembly.  Note that we did not put ball bearings in the bobbins. Not  much change considering the very dramatic change in speed.  However, without those changes, you are not going to get that kind of speed out of a Traddy.

After Victorian times, people compared the productivity of great wheels to the productivity of flyer/bobbin assemblies that had devolved to become slower hobby machines. For example, even Alden Amos designed slip into his DD wheel systems.  The slip, and his preference for single treadle wheels that result in a surge of power and high drive belt slippage, tells us that his wheels were not designed to run much faster than other modern spinning wheels.  He had certainly explored the problems with high-speed flier/bobbin assemblies, but he did not harness the differential rotation speed math to engineer adequate power transfer to the  flies to sustain those high speeds.  Thus, people compared professional grade, great wheels to hobby grade flyers and found the professional grade went faster.  However, when one designs a flier/bobbin assembly for speed and productivity, it goes faster, much faster.

Some spinners will say that they want to do "ART" yarns, and therefore they need the big fliers, and do not need the speed. I understand that, but we (modern spinners) have forgotten how to spin fine and how to spin fast, and those are the traditional criteria for good spinning.

Look at the great ART textiles of history. Very few are based on thick, fluffy yarns because such yarns shed fibers while being worn and the textiles are hard to clean.  (Have a heart to heart talk with Stephenie  Gaustad before weaving such hand spun yarns . It will save much heart ache.)  What we call art yarns are mostly for the display case or single use, fancy wear. Fine textiles are almost always built on fine spinning. Fine spinning is more durable. A fine spun lace yarn is more durable than a fluffy ART yarn.  Lace knit from fine lace yarn on thin needles is more durable than the same stitches knit on larger needles from thicker yarns. To have useful amounts of fine yarn one must spin fast. Fine yarn is strong because it has a lot twist in it. If one is going to insert a lot of twist, then one needs a fast wheel. There are real reasons why spinning fast and fine was the mark of a good spinner. To have a spinning wheel designed to produce low grist, low twist ART yarns is the height of conspicuous consumption.  We have spinners making ART yarns because they do not have the skills to make quality yarn.

I am sure that some readers will claim that they do have the skills to spin quality yarn.  OK, show where you have hand spun the warp and weft for a bolt of shirting fabric - that would be 36 pounds of 22,400 ypp singles (~810,00 yards). Now, who among you have done that?

No, I am not moving the goal posts. The goal posts were always where they are!  What changes is our understanding of how far we are from the goal posts, and how difficult it is to score a goal.   Prior to mill spun, weavers did commonly place orders for 810,000 yards of single with a grist of 22,400 ypp with spinners.  Hand spinners in the UK, Flanders, Italy, India, China, Turkey, and Egypt spun huge orders for very fine yarns from wool, cotton, linen, and other fibers.  It was be done.  It can be done.  My next spinning project is 210,000 yards of 5,600 ypp white wool singles for a weaving project. I have ordered the wool.  I am taking baby steps toward my goals.  Yes, I need more bobbins.

Halloween

The tool of choice for spinning the weft is the AA#1 fast flier with the big bobbin Alden supplied and the 1.05 DRS flier whorl that I made.  That whorl works best with a 2-handed drafting technique.  However, last night I wanted one hand free, so I used the stock flier whorl that Alden Amos supplied.  It has a DRS of 1.2. This DRS  (with drive band slip), works much, much better for one-handed long draw.

That flier/bobbin setup and long draw is a more pleasant way to spin than my normal rig. I admit it.   If I was just spinning as a pastime, I would use the flier/bobbin set as it come out of the box from Alden Amos. My whorl turns hand spinning into real work.

However, I spin because I want the yarn.   I am willing to work so that I get yarn faster.

With the AA stock rig,  my no-load bobbin speed was the same as always.  However, under load, the speed dropped to about half of the speed that I get with my DRS flier whorl. Both have ~ 20:1 drive-wheel to bobbin ratio. It turns out that the advertised drive-wheel to flier ratio means very little, because these ratios say nothing about how much drive band slip occurs.  What counts is actual flier/bobbin assembly speed. Actual flier/bobbin assembly speed can be easily determined with an inexpensive tachometer.  If you do not have a tachometer, you will not understand why you cannot spin as fine and as fast as I do.

If it takes me 70 hours to spin my weft with my DRS whorl,  it would take me ~140 hours to spin it with the stock Alden Amos High Speed  (#1) DD  Flyer. It would be a pleasant 140 hours, but I want my yarn faster. Then the AA HSF is ~15% faster than my Ashford  (ST) lace flyer, so it would take me 160 hours to spin this project on the  Ashford lace flyer, more than 200 hours to spin it on the stock Ashford DD flyer/bobbin, and on the close order of 250 hours to spin it on my standard Ashford Scotch Tension flyer. This is not to say anything against Ashford, because I do not know of another wheel that would have been as easy to modify to increase its speed. (And, I did spin 5# of 5,600 ypp worsted singles on the stock Ashford DD flyer/bobbin Assembly.  That was 28,000 yd.  Then, I spun  a lot more as I started modifying the whorls.)

This little weaving project only  requires 25,000 yd of  (warp+weft).  Thus, on this one project alone, the modifications to my Traddy stand to save me ~ 130 hours.  A faster wheel allows me to do 3 projects in the time it would have taken me just to spin one project.  Tools matter.   Today, I see that if I am starting with a stock Ashford Traddy,  it will save me time in the long run to have a good fast wheel.  I understand that it is worth putting in a hundred hours to make my wheel run faster because I will make it up in one project.  I understand that it is worth the effort to make a faster drop spindle is worth while because I will make it up in one project.  On the other hand, I never let "perfect" be the enemy of good.  I seek better tools, not perfect tools.

If I had started with an Louet or Majacraft  wheel, I would not have the kind of speed that I have today because they are harder to modify and customize.  This is not "sour grapes, this is understanding the engineering and performance compromises inherent in such power transfer systems.

I have done these kinds of  studies before, but every time I calculate drive belt slip on typical modern spinning configurations, it is a little scary.

We made it past Halloween, so Happy All Souls Day!