Deconstructing commercial multi-ply yarn into singles

Alden shows how do do this with spinning wheel, yarn reel, and custom tools.

It can also be done with a spinning wheel, raddle (or tension box),  and the sectional beam on your loom.   Some of us do not have space for an extra yarn reel.  I did have that space, but now there is a loom there.  And, some extra yarn.  And, maybe a few fleece. Textiles is about making huge piles of fiber into tiny piles of fabric.  Or, vice-a-versa.

You can change your mind about how that yarn was plied.

Lou Grantham at SF Fiber in Oakland, Ca got me some new toys for the loom. They let me move forward. Texsolv heddles on the tension box work much better with hand spun wool than the original 6" aluminium heddles.  This is reasonable, as 250 years ago, they were tying heddles from waxed linen thread.  Hooper gives instructions on how to tie heddles.

Current warp is 40 epi of handspun wool singles.  That means 80 bobbins of handspun on the bobbin rack for my 2" sectional beam. I have developed a true love/hate relationship with yarn yardage counter.   The warp is 10s (5,600 ypp, 75 wpi).  It is not the fabric I dream of, but I move forward. Singles bed differently, so it is not the fabric that somebody familiar with commercial 2-ply weaving yarns would expect either. There is a box with another 80 bobbins in the workshop for warping at 80 epi, and chips and sawdust everywhere. I know I can buy bobbins, but I need to practice my wood turing to stay sharp.  It is like spinning,  I need to practice.

Current reed on the loom is 20 dpi, which also seems to work at 80 epi weaving with 40s (22,000 ypp, 45 m/g,  150 wpi).  At one time 40s were the top end of "course spinning".  Mediums were 41s to 60s. and fine spinning was 61s to ~ 90s.  By late Victorian times power spinning produced much finer singles.  From here, my goal is good cloth based on 40s at 80 epi.  I expect it to weight about 4 oz per yard. Note I use the Bradford system with hanks of 560 yd, which is different from the cotton system, where hanks are 840 yd.

Warping fine handspun wool is more interesting than easy-peasy plying 10-ply Aran knitting yarn. For anybody familiar with weaving bolts of wool cloth, making 5-ply or 10-ply knitting yarns would have been trivial.  It is a set of skills that we have mostly lost.  A yard of wool cloth woven from 40s takes about 6, 000 yards, which at 17 tpi, is more than a couple of days of spinning.

I do think loom waste would have been plied up into knitting yarns.  Yes, those weavers were very frugal with their yarn, but they were also careful not to start with a single that that had knots in it. Better to ply that little piece of single into knitting yarns than tie it onto a warp and start with a knot.   On the other hand, I have read that weavers cursed their spinners for the poor quality of their spinning, so I suspect that there were some knots in the warp by the end of the day.  LIke I said, I need to stay in practice.

Broken or cut wool singles have a disturbance in the twist, which for weaving, is worse than a disturbance in the "Force".

Bad Science, myth, and old wives tales.

I said something about turning bobbins from green wood, and got comments that it could not be done.

Some of the bobbins that I turned from solid blocks of green wood in the last few months.

None of these are cracked or warped.

The shavings were used to mulch the blueberries.

The pale ones are mostly wood from pruning the olive trees, and the darker ones are green redwood scrap that I get from a local fencing contractor.  Along this line, none of the kitchen tools that also made from the olive prunings warped or cracked.

Warped bobbin from green wood

Oh yes, there was a learning curve.  In years past, I turned bobbins from greenwood that cracked, warped and were useless. This year, only 1 in 20 cracked, but even it is  usable.

This is the kind of bad science and myth that I hate from the knitting and spinning community.

Learning by doing

Bobbins from green wood

Spinners, knitters, and weavers, all use bobbins. When I first met AA, we talked about bobbin materials, and he laughed at my idea of making redwood bobbins, so I went back to making them from fruit woods and maple.  Royal Fibers sold me some black walnut (both green and well seasoned), so there was a long series of bobbins from black walnut.

Then, I got a source of  FREE, green redwood.  I made some redwood bobbins of various sizes and shapes  just for fun.

When I got my loom, I needed small bobbins that would fit on the AVL bobbin rack, so I went back to my source and got some more of their green 2" by 2" scrap, and started turning bobbins from green redwood.

There are about 72 of  them on the bobbin rack right now, and another 80, in various yarn bins, and another 20 or 30 in process in the shop.  I have made enough of them, that by trial and error, I found the skew chisel angle that works well with the soft redwood.  I do all the turning by eye. It is good practice.  I am down to about a 10% failure rate.  Mostly, the problem is turning the barrel too thin, so the barrel breaks during turning.   I know 2 or 3 ways to get it perfect every time,  (the barrels of my spinning bobbins are very precise.), but doing it by eye is very good practice and very fast.  If I go too deep, what do I have invested? - 3 or 4 minutes of my time!

Yes, I have a couple of hundred redwood storage bobbins that tell us that it is  perfectly possible to turn bobbins from green wood.  If I do them in batches of a dozen, when there are other things to do in the shop, each bobbin takes much less than 5 minutes.  (Working with green wood requires good clean up afterward !)  When I need more redwood, I call a local fencing contractor with their own mill.  Then, when they have a large job near me, I stop by in the afternoon and fill a tote or 2 from their on-site scrap pile.  The crew likes me, as it saves them the trouble of hauling it away.

Each little redwood bobbin holds about 100 yd (8 grams) of weft singles for the loom.  They also fit my Lazy Kate. Thus, 500 yards of 5-ply sport weight plied up from singles held on such bobbins requires the singles from 28 such bobbins.  The 5-ply "gansey" yarn for a sweater requires the singles from more than a hundred such bobbins. Therefore, I have moved to plying 5-ply, sport weight from cakes of singles that sit on the floor under my Lazy Kate; which then acts only as a tension box.

Finer, higher twist singles are less well behaved, and work better being plied from bobbins.

Thus, 6-ply, 1680 ypp, sock yarn is plied from 6 of  these bobbins to make the yarn (200 yd/ 48 gm)  for one sock.   These bobbins will hold a full hank (560 yards) of  Shetland or Suffolk spun at their spin count (~30,000 ypp, ~60 meters/ gram). Thus, these bobbins support plying hanks (500 yds) of  10-ply or 12-ply hoisery yarns ( e.g., 2,700 ypp ) from continuous singles.   And, these little redwood  bobbins will hold ~1,000 yards of  good Rambouillet spun at its spin count.

In my world, lots of little bobbins are a good thing.  These days, my Lazy Kate is configured to ply yarns up to 15-ply, and it is easily reconfigured to make yarns with more plies. 

Lazy Kate configured for sport weight 5-ply

back in the days of big maple bobbins.

Wound carefully, they will hold a full

hank of  10s.

Moving from bobbins to cakes was an incremental process.

The subject rough bobbins are suited for worsted spun singles at grists of less than 35,000 ypp.  For soft woolen spun or "fines" I give the bobbins 2 coats of Danish oil, and polish all yarn contact surfaces.  Bobbins of fines on the Lazy Kate also may need steel washers under them as bearings and oil on their axles. 

Quick and easy bobbin for fines, 

turned from green redwood.

Revenge of the green olive

Learn by doing!!

Revenge of the spinner:

I am liking the spindle turned whorls.  Will try again with well aged maple.

mea culapa

Once again, I have gotten things wrong.

The long story is that after picking plums, I went to prune the plum tree and noticed that the olive needed pruning.  Then, one of the olive  branches looked just the correct size to make bobbins - and I always need bobbins.

I turned some blanks:

Green, the wood is soft and can be turned very fast - such a blank can be made in a couple of minutes.  (There are a lot of wet sticky shavings.  Sweep up will take longer than the turning!)

I let them dry a couple of days:
and turned spinning bobbins:

Boring the ends for 22 mm bearings was accomplished using  a mandrel of sacrificial 

3/8" wooden dowel.

The  still slightly soft olive wood allowed turning the bobbin to size very quickly.  The wood was free, so turning spinning bobbins from block of "green" olive was faster and cheaper than glueing up blanks. With the 3/8" hole down the center, the olive seems to dry fairly quickly without much cracking, warping or distortion.  

The spindle turned (not board cut) whorls seem to work just fine,  but we will see how they wear.

The new flyer/bobbin assembly in service.

Now, I had told people that because of the relatively small difference in rpm between the bobbin and the flyer, the bobbin bearings did not matter that much.  However, with the same whorl sizes, this bobbin with ball bearings seems to allow the flyer/bobbin assembly to spin faster.  A couple cups of coffee, and it will turn well over 4,000 rpm on a sustained basis.  Of course, that is way too fast for fat, low twist yarns, but for hoisery singles wanting 17 tpi , that is only ~6.5 yards/ minute, and with well prepped worsted fiber, 6.5 yards per minute is easy enough to draft.  It is hard on a ST wheel because the constant tension on the single from the ST flyer/bobbin assembly pulls the single apart before enough twist is inserted to hold the single together. (Same problem with a DD wheel set up for low twist yarns!)   However, this DRS  flyer/bobbin assembly only winds-on the single after it has inserted the right amount of twist to hold the single together.  Thus, I do not have to worry about twist, I just focus on drafting.  

On the other hand, drafting 5 to 10 yards per minute of 30,000 ypp to 20,000 ypp  (66 m/g to 44 m/g) singles is enough to keep me focused on the job at hand.  Finer, but not as high twist as sock yarn.

Yep,  a ball bearing at the whorl end of the shaft, 

is worth another couple of hundred rpm. e.g., 5% faster

As modified, AA's competition flyer will easily do 5,000 rpm with the bobbin running about 3% faster.  I know I have said that before, but now the differential rotation speed is better controlled, and everything is smoother.

This flyer/bobbin/ assembly is now my choice for high twist sock yarns.  It looks like it is worth while to put ball bearings everywhere.   I apologize for saying that brass bushings were adequate for spinning bobbin bearings. I was following AA's lead, as he used brass bushings for spinning bobbin bearings.

Comprehensive revision

I have Lyme Disease.  It crept up on me, starting circa 2005, and I did not realize how very disabled I was.

It dramatically affected my strength, endurance, vision, balance, and coordination.

Thus, circa 2011, as I set out to discover just how fast a professional hand spinner could spin in the era 1550 to 1750, I was significantly disabled.

 Now! after more than a year of intensive antibiotic treatment, I am better.   I am not well yet, but I am better. Today, I have more strength, endurance, and coordination than I had in 2011 and a great deal more than I had in say 2014.  Thus, today I do spin spin faster. Therefore, all of the timed spinning in previous posts is conservative.

One could expect a healthy, professional hand spinner with moderately good equipment to spin faster.

My current considered judgment is:

•  That a DRS controlled flyer/bobbin assembly with an accelerator wheel operated by a professional hand spinner should be able to produce 560 yards of worsted spun 5,600 ypp commercial grade warp yarn (10s) per hour, even if the spinner has substantial health issues.  Woolen spun yarns of about the same twist ( 9 TPI) can be spun faster. 
• That a a DRS controlled flyer/bobbin assembly with an accelerator wheel operated by a competent hand spinner can spin woolen or worsted yarns with ~ 20 wool staples in cross-section at a good commercial pace. Romney is easy to spin at more than 20,000 yards per pound, Shetland can be spun at more than 30,000 ypp, and  fine wools such as Merino or Rambouillet can be spun at more than 40,000 ypp.  Fine worsted singles can be reasonably spun at rates of more than 3 yards per minute. Thus, 20,000 ypp 2-ply worsted yarn can be prepared at an over-all rate of 60 yards per minute.
•  20,000 ypp 2-ply is finer than any American entry in the last longest thread competition.  A reasonable time budget to spin, and ply, 10 grams of 20,000 ypp 2-ply using  a DRS controlled flyer/bobbin assembly with an accelerator wheel is on the close order of  25 hours.
• Wool yarns of less than 20 fibers are either fragile or require excessive twist resulting in a unpleasant yarn. I stopped producing wool singles finer than ~ 50,000 ypp.  My goal is to spin better yarns, not finer yarns.

I thought that I needed to make a new spinning bobbin for the Aldan Amos #0 flyer that I was using for fine singles. Along the way, I was going to photograph and describe the DRS spinning bobbin production process. With my revived coordination, I find that a new bobbin is not necessary, so I am just going to post pictures of the spinning bobbins that currently fit the AA flyers.

The AA #0 flyer/bobbin as delivered :

 Single on bobbin is the test single spun by SG.

  AA bobbin detail (ends bored out, brass flange bearings inserted, wood rings glued in to cover brass bearings)

Detail of AA whorl

Flyer with the (2d generation) DRS bobbin/whorl by me:

Bobbin and whorl of  tropical hardwood with Delrin bearings (thanks to Henry Clemes).  The wood was a scrap picked up inexpensively at a Rockler promotion.

Flyer/bobbin disassembled

Ends of bobbin bored out to receive bearings

AA #1 Flyer bobbin with 3d generation - DRS bobbin and whorls

These 11 whorl diameters provide ability to spin woolen and worsted singles from ~3,000 ypp to more than 45,000 ypp. Note the difference between whorl diameters is small.

Bearings for this flyer/bobbin assembly are replacement bearings for skate boards.  Bearing wise, this is over kill as differential rotation is only ~50 rpm.  However, the center of the bearing fits AA's flyer shaft, and this saves me some effort. The skate board bearings are much better than what my local hardware store sells, and much cheaper than what the local bearing specialist charges.

Detail of borings to receive bearings

Detail of bobbin shaft inserted into board cut bobbin end/whorl

All in all, not particularly pretty, but wickedly effective. The oak in the #1 bobbin is recycled from our kitchen remodel. Since then, I have moved to turning ALL whorls from maple to get a more even texture around the whorl, and avoid belt dressing build up at the cross grain.

Storage bobbins to fit 0.25" spindle:

 Front,  Right to Left; board cut redwood ends on redwood barrel, 2x redwood turned from solid blank, blank

Back, Right to Left;  reels for blocking singles, 2x board cut maple ends/whorl on maple barrel, blank for maple barrel. 

Turning tools:

For 5,600 ypp singles, and 50 mm whorls, required accuracy of whorl diameter is about 0.5 mm.

For 40,000 ypp singles, required accuracy of whorl diameter is higher.  Thus, turn a little larger than needed and sand down to final required diameter.  (If your tools are really sharp, no sanding is required for appearance.)

Use HSS tools and keep them very sharp.  A good procedure is to grind to shape, and then hone.  For honing, I use 400 grit emery belts on the Sorby Pro, or a diamond hone.  Do not try to burnish HSS turning tools.

My OLD Bedan  is carbon steel, and it can be BURNISHED and is sometimes used to clean up where the ends meet the barrel. (But was not used on the current generation of spinning bobbins  : )

Burnished tool steel is sharp, but does not hold an edge 

as well as honed HSS.  

If you use a good hone, and get the angles correct, then HSS is as sharp as the very best burnished tool steel edge, but a HSS edge lasts 10 times longer.  Finishing whorls, I figure the edge on my HSS tools lasts 10 minutes, thus a burnished tool steel edge lasts for ~ one cut.  Turning redwood bobbins from solid blanks, I can do a dozen bobbins in a hour without honing the HSS skew chisel I use.  Using tool steel tools, I have to stop and sharpen frequently, and only get half as many bobbins made in an hour.

Better DRS

I knew I was going to do this within minutes of sitting down with the accelerator.  I  just did not know when,  I was working on a big pile of 10s, and the advice from AA was spin each project on a single spinning bobbin. The I figured that with 5-ply it did not matter so much.  And today, I did it.

A new spinning bobbin for the AA #1 flier with a whorl of 50mm to make turning precise flier whorls easier.
I also moved up to a bobbin core diameter of 0.95" (from 5/8").  And it has ball bearings because that was what was on hand.

I also increased the ratio of the accelerator, so the treadle cadence is actually a bit slower for the same bobbin rpm.

With the new flier whorl, I am getting more precise control of twist insertion, yielding a better quality single at about the same speed. I like this system.  Of course I liked the old system.  That was the only hand spinning system that I knew which would allow me to hand spin 10s at 500 yards per hour.  The new system lets me spin better 10s at 500 yd/hr.  It is made out of some scrap oak that I had laying around, and looks kind of clunky, but it works very well.  It is heavy enough that I would not try using to spin 60s s with Scotch Tension, but it works well with DD/DRS.  The only flier whorl I have for it at this point has grooves for 10s, 20s, and 40s. I am going to try an make the bobbins for the #0 flier also 50 mm, so I only need one set of flier whorls.  I need to standardize and simplify.  I have dozens of spinning bobbins and flier whorls that can be combined to yield the DRS for hundreds of different grists.  Pages and pages of my spinning journal are devoted to the DRS from different bobbin/ flyer whorl combinations.  That stuff should all be dumped and replaced by 2 bobbins and 4 flier whorls.

On the other hand, those spinning bobbins and flier whorls were variations on the spinning bobbins and flier whorls that Alden Amos made for me.  And, by making and using variations, I came to understand the system.  This leaves me in no doubt that professional spinners tools from prior to 1770 were optimised for speed, while spinning tools sold after Queen Victoria came to the throne, were optimised for ease of use.

Anyway, about half of this project will be spun on one spinning bobbin with a 30 mm diameter whorl and the rest of the project will get spun on the new spinning bobbin with a 50 mm whorl. By the time, it is all plied, washed and blocked, nobody will be able to see the difference.  Twist is a bit softer, likely closer to 8 than the 9 tpi I have been aiming for  - but that may change once everything has a finish on it. Make it work, then make it pretty.  I spun ~  thousand yards on it this afternoon.  It works, and I like the bigger whorls.  I do not have them all dialed in yet, but I like them.

Over all ratio is close to 1:35.  That does not sound like much, but there is no slip so it is very productive.  I may have to do another time trial here to see if the 500 yd/hr number is still valid.  Sacrifices to the Gods of Speed and all that.  On the other hand, LdV, has plans for much more productive spinning equipment.