Technically, today is a holiday - but I am planning to sneak some textile-related, not entirely non-work into my day. Such as finally working some more on that hairnet that is not quite finished, but coming along nicely. And some more spinning.

Speaking of which - I have tried out a new spinning technique that I finally got to understand well enough to give it a go the day before yesterday. It's the one described in Kathelyne's blog (hint: I watched the videos, and that's what made it click for me).

I am absolutely, utterly in love with that technique, so much that I spent quite a bit of time spinning yesterday. This morning, I made a benchmark test similar to the spinning tests I did before - I have not looked at the spinning angle yet, but I have managed to spin 18 m of thread in half an hour, with high twist. That's not too bad for a technique that I started out with just two days ago, and I have quite a bit of hope that speeding it up a bit more will be possible...

I have done half an hour spinning with each of my treadled spinning wheels now. One of them is single-drive, quite small, lends itself well to fast treadling, and has a ratio of approximately 5.4 : 1 for spinning. That's the old wheel that I learned how to spin on, and I managed 41.5 m in the 30 minutes.

The other wheel is a double-drive second-hand spinning wheel manufactured in Finland sometimes in the seventies (last century, of course) and originally has a ratio of wheel to whorl of about 10 : 1. I have, however, tuned it to a ratio of about 18 : 1 for spinning high-speed, high-twist fine yarns and managed to churn out 73.5 m in the half hour on the tuned wheel. That was quite demanding (partly because it's not perfectly aligned and tuned yet, but mostly because that means really fast drafting).


So my order of output is:
hand-spindle (as would have been expected) - 47 m/h
single-drive treadled wheel ratio 5.4:1 - 83 m/h
Great Wheel replica (yes, it was a production tool) - 129 m/h
double-drive treadled wheel tuned for the occasion, ratio 18:1 - 146 m/h

Now... for the fine print. The tools I know best and have worked with the most are my hand-spindle and the small single-drive wheel. Both are tools that I could use in my sleep, or at least a very sleepy state, and that I can wield with great precision.
Both the Great Wheel and the double-drive treadled one are rather new, have not been used much for spinning yet by myself, and I am convinced that at least the Great Wheel has quite a lot of potential in regards to speed.

I have not decided on how I will do a quality assessment on the four bits, but I will probably ply them and then use the last metre or so of the middle, un-plied, to wrap it onto a survey card for comparison. Another thing I have not decided on is where to ply, possibly I will take my small wheel for all four samples to have good control and a little more speed than on the hand-spindle. It remains... not a mystery, but quite exciting!

Yesterday afternoon, I got to have half an hour of quality time with my favourite hand-spindle - one of my spindle sticks and a whorl that I bought somewhere, ages ago, and that remains my firm favourite for about any hand-spindle spinning tasks I get.

The results? Half an hour of concentrated spinning with spindle (and distaff, naturally, need I even mention that?) yielded 23.5 metres of worsted yarn.

Here's the two little balls of yarn side by side:


Next up: doing the same with my treadled spinning wheels...

I did the first of the spinning output tests yesterday, using the Great Wheel. I had settled on trying for half an hour spinning for each test, and that was quite enough for untrained me on the Great Wheel.

To have the material as alike as possible I will be using industrially prepared Merino top for all the tests (at least four of them, one with each spinning implement). That is, naturally, nothing really spinn-able for the Great One, so I transformed a portion of it into rolags for long-draw first, using my hand-cards.

And the result of half an hour spinning were 64.5 m of yarn (which would add up to 129 m per hour). I aimed for rather thin yarn (to match what I will be doing with the other tools) and for rather high twist (since that is historically more correct than low twist), and once the spinning tests are all done, I plan on plying each sample to have them in a more stable condition - I want to take them with me for demonstrations.

So. When you are reading this, please keep in mind that they are all very, very squishy figures - it's just one spinner, my tools and their quality are unknown to you as is my proficiency with each tool, and you only have my word that the wheel is functioning quite well and that I have not had much practice at all yet with the Great Wheel. (All of which, by the way, are reasons this post is not labeled Experimental Archaeology!)