Fluff

I have been spinning Anna Harvey's Rambouillet - it is beautiful fine white stuff. Unfortunately, I seem to have abused this part of this fleece, and it has some down in it that leaves slubs.  Ok, it looks like home spun, but once it is woven, milled, brushed and clipped, it will just be -  bright white, fine woolen cloth with a very soft nap.  And, I believe in judging the final object.


The drive bands on the wheel were old, and replacing both raised the rpm by 20% -- that is like working 5 days and getting paid for 6 days.  Nice!


This bunch of  rolags seems to want to hang together, so I have to pre-draft them.  Ultimately drafting is faster than take-up.  At flyer speeds of 3,000 rpm, take-up is something over 9 yards per minute.  If I draft a bit faster, a balloon forms around the flyer, and if it gets big enough it hits the MOA and tangles in the other flyer arm.  If the drafting is too slow, the yarn will break off. 


Using the Ott lamp as a strobe, I can see the balloon of yarn around the flyer and adjust my rate of drafting.  Between the balloon and yarn stretch, I can grab another rolag and continue spinning by just dropping rpm to 2,000 for a couple of seconds.


The woolen single is fairly bulky, so I spend a lot of time winding off.  I may need to rig a faster bobbin winder if the fresh singles will take the extra tension of  faster wind off.


Thus, I am embarrassed to admit that this morning's production of woolen 5,400 ypp singles is only just over 400 yards per hour.  I think that when I get past this bag of fleece, production speed will go back up.  On the other hand, it is kind of nice just lounging around at 9 yard per minute.


If Holin wants to tell you that her "slow spun" yarn weaves up into better cloth, then she should be ready to show you pix of cloth woven from her yarn.  The thing is, that unless one spins very fast, it is not cost effective to weave fine hand spun.  How much would enough yarn to weave a bolt of cloth from Holin's slow spun yarn cost?  Do you want to sink that much value into a bolt of woolen cloth?


Edited to add, the problem was in the vibration damper, and flyer speed is now back at 3,600 rpm allowing spinning at over 11 yards per minute.   Still that is another 20% gain in productivity. Now I can spin 4 days what it would have taken 6 days as the wheel was set up yesterday.  This is the advantage of taking the time to tune up the wheel.

Craftsman

Craftsmen (male, female, or other) make quality goods. They make better quality goods than folks that are just out to make a buck.  Hobbyists may actually produce higher quality objects, because they are not limited by resources.  That is, a hobbyist can put unlimited time and resources into an object, but craftsmen must keep the cost of objects within the price range of their clients.  Craftsmen produce the best possible product at the most reasonable price, all things considered.


If  someone needs a warm object, then a craftsman knitter will knit an object that is as warm as is required.  If someone needs a durable object, then the craftsman knitter will knit an object that is a durable as it required.  If someone needs a lace christening gown, then the craftsman knitter will knit an object that is elegant enough to uphold the status of the family. Along the way, for each product, the craftsman will make the compromises needed to meet the requirements including cost and schedule. The craftsman can work to a bid/plan/schedule so the cost of the object is as agreed with the client, and the craftsman does not lose money on the project.


Most modern spinners see spinning as a hobby.  They do not care about the cost of the yarn that they produce, or speed of production. And, they are not interested in making better yarn, they only want soft, pretty yarn.  


In contrast, I see spinning as a craft. I want better yarn. I want stronger yarn, I want more flexible yarn, I want more durable yarn and so forth.  And, I want less expensive yarn. I want yarn that has fewer man hours invested in it. I put a lot of effort into working out how to spin faster with less effort. I want yarn that that is just as good but is made from lower cost fibers. That is, I seek to find better fibers at a lower cost. And, I seek yarns that require less fiber, for the same warmth, durability, or strength.  Every spinning project that I do has requirements, schedule, and budget.  When a spinning project does not meet its requirements, schedule, or budget, I pull the plug on it. 


I started spinning because I was a knitter, and I was not happy with the available mill spun yarns. I wanted better.   When I started spinning I was told that it was not possible to hand spin the  worsted spun, 5-ply sport weight yarns, called "gansey yarn".  I was told these yarns had never been hand spun.  It took me 9 months before I was hand spinning such yarns, but the process was so slow as to be impractical.  The yarns I was making were better than mill spun, but they were too expensive.  I had to work out how to make them less expensively.  The obvious solution was to spin faster.  Today, I spin much faster.  That means that my yarn is much less expensive.  I like better yarns that are less expensive.


The first step to spinning faster was to understand differential rotation speed (DRS) as discussed in Alden Amos and the Victorian authors. DRS allows the flyer/bobbin assembly to run at much higher speed, and it changed the nature of the drafting, allowing true worsted yarns to be produced much faster. Part of this step was learning different spinning techniques that allowed me to take advantage of DRS. This really was an effort. This development of other spinning techniques was perhaps the single most important aspect of the spinning faster process. 


The second step was to have Alden Amos make me faster flyers.  I considered having him make me a custom wheel, but the Ashford Traditional drive wheel actually produced more speed than the wheels Alden was making at the time.  That is, an engineering analysis selected the Ashford drive wheel over the Alden product.  It was not a capricious or sentimental decision.  Part of this step was the development of "gang whorls" so that as the effective diameter of the bobbin changed,  I could change whorls rather than stopping to wind off.  I had to design and fabricate the gang whorls. This facilitated the production of longer, continuous singles.


The third step was to make an accelerator for my Alden Amos/DRS/Ashford hybrid.  Again it was an engineering analysis.  It was not a capricious or sentimental decision.  The result was the accelerator/Alden Amos/DRS/Ashford hybrid with advanced drafting technique.


The net result is that my wheel spins woolen singles between 2 and 4 times faster than any  wheel on the market.  My wheel spins worsted singles between 3 and 10 times faster than any wheel on the market.  This was not an accident. It was attention to detail, and doing the engineering correctly.  It was understanding the technique so I could make the required tools.  It was understanding the tools, so I could develop the technique.


Since spinning/twist insertion is the single largest cost in spinning, my yarn is much less expensive than other hand spun. I (the knitter and weaver) is the customer for I (the spinner).  I (the knitter and weaver) like the lower cost of the faster spinning. I (the knitter and weaver) like the shorter delivery times for the faster spinning. All around, I like the faster project development and production cycles. 


This allows me to (inexpensively) dream-up, produce, and test yarns that are not made by mills and which I have never seen before.  I learned to make more flexible yarns.  I learned to make stronger yarns.  I learned to make more durable yarns, and so forth. I would never have had time for this experimentation if I had to spin as slowly as most spinners spin. Without DRS, you will never really understand sock yarn. 


I can plan an object, spin and test samples of a yarn that I have never before spun, and then spin and produce the object, all in a reasonable time frame. I (the knitter and weaver) know in advance what the cost of the yarn will be that I (the spinner) will produce for the project. 


I am a craftsman spinner with just one rather demanding client.  Myself.  If I spin better and faster, then I improve my product and lower my costs.  Then, I am happy.

GW 2

These days, I do not keep a great wheel.  I do have 2 motor driven spindles and 2 spindles that fit onto my treadle wheel.  None of these are as impressive to look at as a GW, but they are faster. And, they all allow me more use of both hands for drafting true worsted.

The motor driven spindles are easy to pause or stop, but hard to reverse.  Therefore, I had to learn how to wind-on with the spindle going in the same direction as when spinning.  It can be done, the answer is "out there", and I have no interest in teaching driven spindle technique.

If one does not have to reverse the spindle, then one does not have to stop, or pause the spindle, and the spindle can rotate continuously in the same direction.  One CAN spin a entire hank of single on a great wheel without ever reversing the wheel to wind on.  This can be much faster/easier than reversing rotation to wind-on depending on the inertia of the rotating system.

Nevertheless, the spindle must be slowed at various points in the spinning/drafting/wind-on process. Even though the spindle/wheel always rotates in the same direction, the slowdown/speedup cycle wastes energy. And, the wind-on cycle slows production of yarn. 

A spindle on my treadle wheel can insert twist many times faster than the flyer/bobbin assembly,  but the DD flyer bobbin assembly will spin and wind-on much more yarn in a minute or an hour or a day.  One of the motor driven spindles can insert twist many times faster than either spindle on my treadle wheel, but net production of single is not much different. Net production of spun yarn by a spindle is limited by the nature of its cycle, rather than by its peak speed.

A DRS flyer/bobbin assembly is the fastest hand spinning device for most natural fibers. Ring spinning can be faster for silk, but that is a specialized application.  Yes, those old double drive spinning wheels were the fastest way to spin.  They used the two loops of the drive band to synchronize the rotation of the bobbin and flyer to insert just the right amount of twist as the yarn was wound in at just the correct rate for the inserted twist. They did not have the drive band slip that is built into modern double drive wheels.  The result is that a double drive wheel without drive band slip that can produce singles much faster than a great wheel.  This is a truth that you have heard before.  It is just that all  modern DD wheels do have drive band slip and thus, spin more slowly than a GW.   In fact, a DRS flyer/bobbin assembly can produce true worsted spun yarn 5 times faster than a great wheel.  Every sock knitter should think about that.

And, since DRS is faster, sock yarns of more and finer (true worsted spun)  plies are possible.  These are very nice yarns that are simply out of reach of even the best spinners using a GW.  The use of DRS opens up spinning true worsted 5-ply gansey or even 10-ply Aran yarns.  And, it makes spinning true worsted warp for the loom much more feasible.

 On the other hand, a DRS flyer/bobbin assembly requires real skill to setup and maintain. I have seen two old DRS double drive wheels where the original DRS ratios had been "repaired", and the wheel converted to  modern standards.   As a result of the repairs, they could spin lower grist yarns, but could only do so --- slowly. These had been true collector's items and the owners were very proud of how fast they could spin -- if they only know how fast those wheels had been originally designed to spin, they would have been agast!   The difference between these wheels as designed and these wheels as "repaired" was only millimeters, and yet it made a huge difference in their performance. If one can teach the basics of using a GW in a 4-day workshop, then I would say that one could teach the basics of using DRS in a 4-week workshop.

Yes, Holin, my old Ashford can spin/ply a 500 yd hank of sport weight, worsted spun, 5-ply (gansey yarn) in an easy day.  How long does it take your GW?  In less than 14 hours, I can spin/ply a 500 yd hank of  worsted spun, 3x2-ply cabled, 1,600 ypp "sock yarn".  How long does that take your GW?  Shall we set up a demonstration in front of a judge and jury?  I want spinners like Judith MacKenzie and Stephenie Gaustad who know, and appreciate,  worsted spun yarns involved.

I have only been spinning for 6 years. (And, I was sick with Lyme Disease for much of that time!)  How long have you been spinning?  What will I be spinning when I have spun as long as you have been spinning?

Pix of 20 fiber bundles

You have seen them. Every serious spinner drafted out super fine as they added lots of twist and the result is a few inches or a few feet of a spin count thread - a bundle of 20 fibers.  It is the natural result, you just did not recognize it for what it was.  There are lots of photographs of such fine threads on the internet. See for example  https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXrybvkX9PcCrzRrmxBT2rInv73snovA-5bUrK7sZSgrilYYwhAPfhtmAHgq4ZC3iJ303T_yZ-5UJr_4dzKlIOmvMg3YADCWVsiYGR1Mm0nQjndj5jz0cjw5CaPDscukn_sJJZ/s1600/co6.JPG by li12345 on Ravelery and  http://russianfibers.blogspot.com/

What is less common is folks that spin miles of such threads in a reasonable time.  

I do not seem to have a teacher, so I am still working out the process.  It is slow work.  As I explain it, I get a lot of push back.  I would rather spend my time working forward, than dealing with the same pushback attitudes over and over.  I have a few students, and do not worry about the public.

In 1400, spinners did spin  spin miles and miles of such threads very quickly.  Most modern spinners cannot do what spinners in 1400 could do.  Why is that?  Taking pix of the threads is not a big deal.  Taking pix of how to do it quickly is hard.  At internet resolutions, the moving thread just disappears.  It looks like I am making new clothes for the emperor out of frog hair, so I just post pix of the equipment. Smart ones will figure it out.

Twist and grist

I said, that for a hand spinner, inserted twist defines grist. A test is reported below showing that hand spinners can control grist to plus or minus 5%.  Can you control grist better?

This summer I have been spinning "10s" - worsted 5,600 ypp singles.

I wound a dozen hanks of 560 yards and weighed them.  Each should weigh ~45.4 grams.

I used a particular set of flyer bobbin whorls, spun 7 or 8 grams of single, then wound it off onto a storage bobbin. Then, I wound the storage bobbin on to a skeiner, blocked the hank with steam, and weighed it.

Mostly the hanks weighed right in the range of 43 to 48 grams.  Thus, by using DRS to control twist, it is possible for hand spinners to control grist to within plus or minus 5% over samples of 560 yards and maintain a specific grist over projects of many hanks.

Smaller samples tell me that this can be done with 20s or 40s.  I did samples of finer singles in the middle of the above test.  It is possible to spin 10s, then spin much finer 20s and 40s, and then go to back to spinning 10s at the same grist as before.

The 8 lb of  5s loom warp that I did last year with the smaller and less precise whorls, runs about plus or minus 12%.  (At the time, I thought the yarn was reasonably consistent for hand spun, and was very happy to have hanks anywhere in the range of 80 to 100 grams.)

By planning twist, one can control grist.  This is deep inside the world of  "the intentional spinner." The only path here, that I know, is DRS.  Without DRS I do not think you are going to be able to control grist to within 5%.  Without DRS, it is going to take you much, much longer to spin 7,000 yard of 5,600 ypp,  2,240 yd of 11,400 ypp and 1,120 yd of 22,400 ypp singles. Really, how many tries would it take you to spin a 560 yd hank of single that weighs between 10.5 and 12.5 grams? With DRS, I can be reasonably confident of spinning such a 40s on the first try.

It was not always like that.  Better tools brought better skills.  Better skills let me design and make better tools, and so forth.

Today, I find the omission of DRS by Judith Mackenzie to be grievous.  When my variation on grist  with DRS was 12%, and SG told me she could maintain grist within 10%,  I could give a pass to intuitive spinners who did not discuss DRS.  However, now that I know more of the control that DRS can provide, then failure to discuss DRS is a serious error and omission.  Alden Amos at least brings the topic up and discusses the math, even if he does not get into the details of hand movements and mechanics.

Metal spindles

We are very much a product of our culture and the expectations programmed into us by that culture.

We recognized neolithic spindle whorls that fit on a wooden shaft.  These were made of wood, bone, stone and ceramic. We found/find a lot of them, and they continue up into the bronze and iron ages. See for example http://pinterest.com/habetrot/whorls-spindles/  Subsistence communities still using such spindles to spin coarse yarns. Moreover, bronze and lead whorls on a wooden shaft work very well.  However, in the bronze and iron ages, population exploded and cloth production increased dramatically, and professional spinners associated with industrial scale cloth production needed faster ways to spin.

If I were an Iron Age spinner, and I needed to spin a lot of garment weight (5,000 to 10,000 ypp) yarn quickly for weaving, what would I use?  I would use a piece of iron or bronze wire with a wooden whorl that acts as a yarn spool or pirn.

Certainly many folks use steel wire for the shafts of bead spindles such as http://askthebellwether.blogspot.com/2007/09/what-is-bead-spindle.html .  However, the idea of using a metal blade with a wooden bobbin or pirn as a whorl seems to be rare these days. 

The concept works for both drop spindles and supported spindles. We can look at medieval art, and see nothing what-so-ever that looks anything like this.   See http://pinterest.com/gbertholet/medieval-crafts-spinning-spindles/ for example.  On the other hand, in that art, we also do not see anything that looks like the industrial production of shiploads of cloth for export either. And, we do know that such production was going on.  Art is not the last word on industrial production technology.

It is not pretty, but it is an awesome spindle for spinning. The metal "blade" (shaft) is small enough that the spindle can be spun up to very high speed, which is somewhat limited by the diameter/inertia of the wooden whorl. It is much faster than a spindle with a wooden blade and a whorl. It is faster than a spindle with a steel shaft and  "spindle beads" as the relatively high inertia of the spindle beads tends to slow the spindle.   Drafting is just like drafting for any other spindle, just faster.  Most modern recreational spinners will find it difficult, and thereby assume that I know nothing about spinning with a spindle.  They will object to having to spin the spindle frequently and assume that I know nothing about spinning.  No, it is a matter that I tend to spin garment weight yarns, and I want much higher rates of twist insertion than most modern recreational spinners can accommodate.  I know that the spindle is slowing because it is putting a lot of twist into the yarn and a lot of twist in the yarn is what I want.   Most modern recreational spinners using a drop spindle are not trying to spin as fast as possible. They spin for relaxation.  I spin because I want yarns that are not commercially available.  Thus, I want to spin as fast as possible.

The design has many advantages. It is cheap and durable. This spindle design can withstand being dropped on a stone floor many times. It is easy to fabricate.  And. the wire can be used to toast marsh mellows or cheese over an open fire.  :  )  The wooden whorl/bobbin allows very fast wind-on, and instead of winding off, the  bobbin/whorl/pirn can be slipped off, and handed to the person doing the plying or even to the weaver as a wound shuttle pirn. This can speed the entire textile production process. 

However, such tools are not likely to be found in the archaeological record because when they break the pieces will either get reforged or reused as wire. To anybody that actually makes stuff, such little pieces of metal are very handy.  And, archaeologists are not looking for such a spindle, it is not part of their culture. They are looking for spindle whorls of stone, ceramic, lead, bronze . . . . 

Did any previous culture every use such spindles?  Who knows?, but it is an intermediate step between a neolithic spindle with a metal whorl and a flyer/bobbin assembly.  This suggests that at some point, somebody did work with the concept. (Or, perhaps that intermediate point did not occur until bobbins were put on the spindles of great wheels.)  And, without the wooden bobbin, you have the "twisty stick" that was traditionally  used by wool merchants to grade wool.  Since the grading (and hence price) of wool was based on how fine a thread a competent spinner could spin from the wool, this suggests a relationship between the grading tool and the spinning tool. It may be that at the end of the dark ages, the grading tool was just a metal spindle without its bobbin.

A Skeiner

I should have done this sooner.  Way sooner.

The royal profile of 

Casimir the Great

The back side of 

Casimir the Great.

 It is a skeining wheel bolted to the back of the the squirrel cage swift.  It took a most of  a day to make and the next morning to test and fix, but now it works.  This wheel is for 1 meter skeins Now that I know how to do it, I can make other wheels for larger skeins rather quickly.

The really neat thing is skeining off of the little Shaker Rockets.  Set them on the floor and the Skeiner on a table.  I use the spring loaded tensioning device from my large cake winder to put a little tension into the yarn. That is the ticket!

Knitters have their lists of essential tools.  Spinners have their lists of essential tools.  Vertical swifts never seem to make either list.  However, vertical swifts and skeiners form an interface between spinning and knitting.  So, while vertical swifts and skeiners are not essential to either spinners or knitters, they are highly desirable for folks that do both.

At this point, I have something like 24 hours of effort and $20 of materials and supplies into Casimir the Great.  Amos could have made me a better one, but if I ordered it last week I would not have had it in hand this morning for winding skeins, and it would have cost me more. Mostly, this fits what I want to do, at least this month.  And, I will never be afraid to take it apart and make it better.  This is one time where courage comes cheap.

Any tool that can be made, can be made better.

The new spinning workstation

A few months ago, Stephenie Gaustad told me that if I really wanted to spin fast, I should go to an e-spinner or motor spinner.  I had a bunch of reasons why I did not want to start motor spinning.

However, last month I helped my sister move her gold smith shop.  At the end of the day there was a 1/4 hp, 18,000 rpm industrial motor left, over and my sister suggested that I take it home with me ( Across country.)

It sat in the corner of the shop for a few days, then a rebuild kit arrived from Grizzly, and in a couple of hours,  it was a good as new.

Then, it wanted a purpose in life.  It wanted to spin.  There were a dozen prototypes, including one with a Ashford Jumbo ST flier that actually did several hundred yards of ~9,000 ypp single before being disassembled.

However,  one cannot keep nice little motor like that in a drawer.  It wants to spin.

The new spinning workstation.  

Much, much faster for high twist singles.  This is a prototype but as a workstation, it works so well that I am not in a hurry to build the Mark II version.

Speed is controlled by a "router speed controller" with a foot pedal (like a sewing machine) for a soft start. (This approach works on "universal wound" motors with brushes.) The flier is a #1 double drive by Alden Amos.  I turned the bobbins to have correct DRS and core diameters to insert the correct twist for the singles that I spin.  The MOA is standard Ashford.

I would not have bothered if I was spinning low twist (less than 5,600 ypp) yarns, and I think that yarns thinner than  ~ 30,000 ypp are too fragile for this machine, but for garment weight singles, it is wonderful.