Distaffs for worsted spinning revisited

When I was spinning slower, I used thicker slivers and used tension between the drafting hand and the distaff to attenuate the sliver.

Now, I am spinning thinner yarns, faster, using thinner, more fragile slivers; and, the slivers tend to part as I unwind them from the distaff.

Thus, I am moving toward coiling the sliver loosely into a tub or basket.

For the current project, the slivers are ~6 yd long, weigh ~12 gr, and are spun into  ~ 200 yards of single.

However, I am starting to seriously look toward the production of 40s, where hanks of 560 yards will weigh less than 12 grams. For 40s, a 6 yd sliver only weighs a couple of grams and yields ~ 100 yd of single.  Why the leapfrog to the smaller sliver? I do not know, but that is what seems to work.  

One line of thought is that I was using fatter slivers because everyone else was. Then, tugging the sliver off the distaff provided some attenuation and made the work of the drafting hand easier.  There is much discussion in older books on hand spinning on how wonderful the human hand is for spinning because of the great attenuation it can achieve in one process. Such attenuation in mills requires several steps. My current feeling is that regardless of how wonderful the hand is at attenuation, the spinning goes faster when the drafting hand has less work to do. This can be done by using a distaff or by using thinner slivers.

Over this past summer, I have spin almost 20 miles of fine singles, mostly from commercial top prepared and packaged for commercial mills.  Those singles are suited for their purpose. They have a clearly handspun appearance that I do not regret.  However,  when I take the time to oil,  comb, and diz the wool, the singles are more uniform, and spinning goes faster. For the 5-ply singles of the grist that I have been spinning, the net advantage is modate.  For 40s the net advantage is very significant. For 60s the advantage is gargantuan.  Simple combing with 5-pitch English combs is all that is needed.

Some teachers of spinning lace offer elaborate rituals of fiber preparation.  These will make you feel better, but what will allow you to spin better lace is a properly setup wheel.

I admit it. This summer has been like an adolescent love affair, where every day I learn something wonderful about differential rotation speed (DRS) and how to better employ it. Years ago, I learned to spin 30,000 ypp singles on the Ashford DD flyer, but those singles on that flyer was real work. Those singles on my early DRS fliers could be produced routinely - without ritual and ceremony.  With the 50 mm whorls that I made last spring providing more accurate control,  spinning 30,000 ypp singles from 60 count fibers has at long last become very easy.  I can look back and see that most of the modern conventional wisdom on spinning fine is just ritual and ceremony and does not help with the actual spinning.

Two spinning gurus told me that "such and such" a fiber prep was necessary, and with the wrong wheel, it is. I bought the equipment, and spent weeks learning the technique.  However, with wrong wheel, fine spinning was still very difficult.  Now, I know that with a correctly setup wheel, that fiber prep is not necessary, and spinning such fine singles can be easy. What the gurus should have talked about was the correct wheel. They wasted my time and money.   Then, any good fiber prep would work well.  The difference between the correct wheel and the wrong wheel? About a millimeter (1/25")!!  I kid you not.





 

More on spin count

The distaff is dressed with 60 count flock-run long wool, and the task at hand is 40s (150 wpi) for weaving warp. I need a good bit of the warp, and I am working on it diligently.

However, spinning 60s from 60 count wool is so easy and so relaxing that I do find myself accumulating bobbins of 60s - and this is only with flock run fiber -  and not well graded fiber. After "working" on the 40s for a while, I flip the drive band over to the 20 tpi whorl and spin 60s for fun.  I may just change my mind, and just spin the warp from 40 count wool.  I had intended to spin the weft as 22,400 woolen singles from 80 count Rambouillet.  Samples of woolen singles of from 40 count fibers are not that soft, but they are faster and easier to spin.    Frankly, at this point, I find worsted singles in these grists easier to handle than woolen, and singles management is becoming a big deal.  

This rather upsets things as I have a lot of fine (80 count) wool ordered for this project- all based on the conventional wisdom that it would be easier to spin 22,000 ypp singles from finer wool. As I get into this, what I find is that it is easier to spin 22,000 ypp/150 wpi from 40 count wool (34 micron)  than from 80 count (20 micron) wool - - if you have the correct equipment.  And this goes for both worsted and woolen singles.

Let me say this over and over.  If you have a single drive wheel, then yes, it is easier to spin 40s/22,000ypp/150 wpi from finer fiber.  If you are working on a DRS controlled spinning wheel then is is easier to spin 40s from 40 count wool, and 80s from 80 count fiber.  And, a DRS wheel will let you spin 40s about 5 to 8 times faster than a single drive wheel.  NOT twice as fast, but more like 5 times faster -- or even more.  This is spinning.  Why do not the "experienced" spinners / teachers talk about it?  Because it takes some math and skill in setting up the wheel.  I think spinning 8 or 9 times faster is worth a little math.

The bobbin core on the AA#0 flier is 0.95", the bobbin whorl is 45.00 mm in diameter, and the flyer whorls for 40s, 60s and 80s are 45.9, 45.72, and 45.63 mm respectively..   These must be calculated, and not guessed. And then, a bit of dirt on whorl can spoil everything.  These combinations insert approximately 18, 20, and 23 twists per inch to produce 22,000, 30,000 and 45,000 ypp singles. That flier runs at over 4,000 rpm. The bobbin whorl on the AA#1 flier is 50.00 mm, and its flyer whorls produce 10s, 20s, and 40s. That flier runs at over 2,500 rpm.

I need a quarter million yards of 22,000 ypp (40s) singles.  I need easy!!  I need fast. Last winter, before the improvements on the wheel, I thought the path to fast and easy was finer wool.  Now, I know better. If I am going to write a check for $1,500 for the fiber for one project, I want to make sure I am buying the correct fiber.

The extra speed of from the new accelerator and the additional precision from the larger ~(50) mm DRS seem to facilitate the spinning.  Over all DRS as a technology resolves most of the difficulties enumerated by other authors discussing the spinning of fine singles. I am going to revisit this real soon.

However, watching the fine thread slipping through the fingers at 3 or 4 yards per minute does tire the eyes and ultimately bring on vertigo.  This can be avoided by spinning by feel.

I can watch DVDs while spinning.  The only thing is that I must limit wood working to retain sensitivity in the finger tips to allow spinning with minimal looking. However, with limited woodworking, I can spin even 80s (200 wpi) mostly by feel.

Distaff

 I did not learn to use a distaff when spinning wool. Then, I read a post in the blog, A stitch in time, and she pointed out that all the old pictures of spinners have distaves. So, I tried it. 

It works. OK, that is part of my Niddy poked into a hole in my Traddy, but it works!

For worsted spinning, it is like having 3 hands. The drafting hand can keep some tension between the distaff and the drafting zone to keep the fibers aligned. This is sort of like continuous pre-drafting. While a wrist distaff or wrapping the roving around the drafting arm can store fiber and help keep it orderly and out of the way, these methods do not aid in the drafting process like a real distaff.  A good distaff aids in the drafting process.  

Those old timers had a lot spinning to do, and a short time to do it.  They knew how to spin a high-quality thread as fast as possible.  They used a distaff

I swear that I have not seen modern spinners using real distaves, but then a few days ago I would have sworn it was not in the books either.  However, there it is, in the first paragraph of Chapter 7 in Amos.  He did not write “Use a distaff when spinning linen.”  No, he wrote, “Use a distaff.”

The problem that I had with the distaff was that my grist rose from my intended 9,000 ypp to 14,000 ypp. I have to retrain my drafting hand -- or change my yarn design. 

What works best? Actually a wooden yard stick stuck in my waist band worked fairly well, and is fairly typical of what we see  in Classic Greek art.  However, it is a bit awkward for sitting at a spinning wheel.  For a spinning wheel, Amos suggests a free standing distaff.  However, I like to spin in my window corner beside the breakfast table - not much floor space there.  Thus, my solution is a distaff attached to my wheel.

How good is it?  Well I am spending all day making a better one.  It is a technology with huge promise.

Russian Distaves

It is like knitting sheaths.  They made them because they work very well.

PS. It is not pretty but the Mark II distaff is very, very functional: