Now that you know my thoughts on what is important on a spindle wheel for spinning, you might want to check out what other people think, or get some more information about these wheels, and a few other perspectives on them

As usual, there's some stuff to be found on the Internets. One very nice article with pictures of different kinds of spindle bearings on Great Wheels is the one Lee Juvan wrote for Knitty. She also lists some literature in that piece, including literature for tips on how to spin with this drafting style. Another collection of spindle wheel heads can be found here, including a nice example of a Minor's Head. Another several examples are in the collection of Old Sturbridge Village Museum.

If you want to buy an antique (or even a modern) Great Wheel for your spinning, I'd strongly recommend to take a look at the wheel and try before you buy. This, obviously, might not be possible in all cases - the wheel might need some tender loving care, or work being done, before it will spin, or it might be too far away for you to travel before buying. In this case, you'll have to depend on the seller's description plus photographs and your own judgement - and in the end, hope that you are lucky and get what you are looking for. Blind-buying spinning wheels of any kind is not something I'd recommend, but if you have to, don't hesitate to ask for detail pictures of crucial bits, or specific questions about the wheel and its parts.

If you are looking into building one of these beasts yourself, there's one whole issue about Great Wheels in the Spinning Wheel Sleuth, a newsletter just about spinning wheels - it's the October 2014 issue. You can also check out the articles on this blog tagged "building a Whool Wheel", and feel free to ask questions in the comments - I'll try to be as helpful as possible.

Whether you are planning to do the building yourself or have a woodworker/spinning wheel maker do it for you, previous experience with ordering tools from craftspeople has taught me this: Make sure the person building the thing really, really understands what are the important bits, how the thing works, and how it is going to be used. If you have not spun on a Great Wheel before, I'd advise you to try and get that experience before you get one yourself, whatever way you will use to get it. Having a personal experience and understanding how the process works will help you explain to your crafter what to watch out for.

When planning out the wheel, make sure you pay attention to where the wheel hub will be, height-wise, compared to you as the spinner - you want it at a place where you can comfortably keep the wheel in motion without bending down or stretching up. Make sure the bench construction carrying the wheel is sturdy enough to support the wheel without wobbling. Alignment of the wheel and spindle, as well as appropriate weight for the wheel (as light as possible would be my advice) are the other key points.

Make a list beforehand of the things that are important for you. Make drawings. Then make sure the important things are all duly understood, and incorporated into the design. Communication with crafters can be difficult if they have no understanding on how this wheel works, and chances are high that your normal woodworker, or even your normal modern-ish flyer spinning wheel maker, will not know how Great Wheels tick, and what to look out for. So be prepared - maybe even bring a video showing how spinning is done on such a wheel.

Happy hunting, building or commissioning your wheel!

Occasionally, I get questions about spindle wheels in my mail, usually from people on the hunt for one, and sometimes including the question about where mine is from. There's several possibilites to get one - ebay is certainly one, though you'll have to have it shipped, or find a way to get it transported to you, which might be difficult, as these wheels tend to be rather large. There's woodworkers who might be willing to make one, or you can go for it and make one yourself, like I did. There's one plan available on how to build a wheel, and I think I actually did buy that plan at one point, years and years ago, but never actually used it.

No matter which way you are going to go for, the most important thing, in my opinion, is that you know what to look at so you get an actual working, functioning tool. So what are the important bits of a Great Wheel, or Spindle Wheel?

Obviously, since it's called a Spindle Wheel, one of the important bits is... the spindle. The second important bit is the wheel itself. Let's start with the latter.

The wheel has to hold and take along the driveband which in turn moves the spindle itself, which is usually set into a bit of wood with one or several grooves to hold the driveband. In some cases, there's an additional ratio-changing construction between the main wheel and the spindle, called a Minor's Head or sometimes Miner's Head.

The important things here are: The wheel has to be aligned well enough with the spindle or minor's head to avoid sideways pull on the driveband; the spindle has to turn smoothly in its bearings (which can take any number of shapes), and tension of the drive band needs to be high enough to avoid (too much) slippage, but otherwise as low as possible (as usual on spinning wheels). The spindle should be straight and taper towards a point; that point does not need to be needle-sharp, but it should be pretty pointy, as when spinning, the thread glides over the spindle tip with each rotation. So if your spindle wobbles, and/or has a broad tip, this adds to the "yank" you will get when the yarn goes over the tip. Less yanking means you have a smoother spinning feeling, and I find it easier to do a good, even yarn with a smooth spinning feeling.

The second important bit, the wheel. Here's where it gets interesting.

Medieval Great Wheels are great because there is no Minor's Head, so you need to get all of your rotational speed needs satisfied by the ratio between wheel and spindle. For a rather high-twist yarn, which we will assume is the goal of the medieval spinner in most cases, this means you want a big ratio so you don't spend an eternity turning the wheel... and that means: small spindle pulley wheel diameter, large wheel. This is still the case with the later wheels, though you can get a higher ratio with a smaller main wheel when using a Minor's Head (which was patented by Amos Minor or Miner - both variations of the name can be found - in 1810). The Knitting Geneaologist also has an interesting article about the Great Wheel vs. the flyer wheel (inspired by someone else's blog post, but an interesting read even if you don't look at the inspiration).

Since you have to turn the wheel with one hand, there's two options... in theory. Option one is one-sided mounting of the wheel, which is what you typically see on the Great Wheels. Option two is mounting the wheel with an axle on both sides in two supports, and fixing a crank to the axle on one side so you can turn the wheel with the crank. This is sometimes seen on small wheels with a spindle, and quite common on early flyer wheels. It is not a true option for a Great Wheel, though - because of the spinning procedure.

When spinning on a Great Wheel, you have a non-continuous process, just like in spindle spinning. This means you turn the wheel and draft your fiber, then turn some more until you have sufficient twist in the yarn. During this process, the yarn glides over the top of the spindle tip, forming a spiral from the base of the spindle (where you store your finished yarn) to its tip. Once your length is spun, you have to stop the wheel, turn it backwards a little to un-wind the spiral back to the spindle base, and then start turning it again in spinning direction to first wind up the finished yarn, then spin the next length.


This means you have to stop and speed up your wheel all the time while spinning, all with one hand. If you are doing this with a little crank in the middle of the wheel, it is much, much harder to do than when you can access the whole length of the wheel spoke - you can slide your hand towards the rim of the wheel for stopping and starting, getting a much better leverage and thus needing much less strength, and slide it towards the hub to maintain rotational speed with small, easy motions of your hand and arm.

The starting and stopping all the time also explains why the wheels on this spinning tool look so light and airy, and don't have the solid rims we know from pedal-driven flyer spinning wheels. From my own experience, I can tell you that each gram does count when you are spinning, and you want your wheel to be as light as possible. The wheel on my own construction weighs in at about 2.7 kg, and that is with a very wide rim (about 11 cm) and a diameter of 115 cm. When I start spinning, it seems all light and nice and fine, but after a while, you can really feel the arm muscles getting more and more tired - it definitely does need training, and building up some endurance in the arm.

So this is why you want a wheel that turns easily in its bearing (even though that can be as simple as a metal axle through a block of wood, like in my case) and does not weigh much - which is achieved by slender spokes and a rim that is not from solid pieces of wood, but from a steam-bent strip of wood. The smaller the distance between your spindle and your drive wheel, and the less inherently wobbly your construction, the narrower this rim can be. My wheel is designed to be taken apart and travel, which is not what the original wheels would have done, so I went for a really wide rim. This has proved to be a good idea - I've had the driveband wander off the drive wheel even with this large width when my things were not properly aligned, as they tend to do right after setting up.

So, to sum up - non-wobbly, straight, adequately pointy spindle, in good alignment with a light, large drive wheel that is mounted on one side only. These are the things that will make your Great Wheel a great tool.

 

Here are some more pics of the wheel, this time in better quality and in front of a proper background. The photos are all quite large, so you can click on them for a more detailed view.



The complete wheel is about 1.7 m long and almost 2 m in height, thanks to the large wheel with 1.15 m diameter. It's mounted with the axis between my breast and shoulder height.


The extra wedges at the foot of the spindle holders is a concession to the transportability - they serve for adjusting the spindle holders and spindle. For a stationary wheel, I would adjust the holders once and then mount them to stay - but for transportable, this is of course not helpful.


There's only one wedge to keep the wheel stand in place - just like in the medieval depictions.

The Museum Night in Mainz was very nice, if quite taxing - it's just a difference whether you are doing all the showing and explaining during the day and normal working hours with good lighting or during the night. We had a rather warm night, but unfortunately not a dry one! The visitors who braved the spouts of rain, however, were a wonderful audience, and it was a delight to show them crafts with wool.

The wheel did very well on all accounts, from an easy and unproblematic setup to its performance all during the night, even with changing air temperature and changing humidity levels. The only little thing that needs fine-tuning is the adjustable connection for the leather drive band - but I already have an idea for that. 

And here, finally, are the promised pictures of the new Great Wheel:

 The last step in construction - cutting the mortises for the spindle stand tenons.

 Fitting the tenons.


The finished, disassembled Wheel - a base board, four legs, spindle stands, wheel stand, the wheel itself and a box of small things for assembly and adjustments.


It fits! It fits! That's the car with the presentation stuff, just before I left for Mainz. The wheel is hanging under the car roof, and the rest of the parts are hanging out with my other wood utensils and furniture.

And here it is finally, in action! Wedges hold the stands, and additional wedges under the spindle stands and in the leather spindle bearings allow adjustment of the whole setup so spinning is smooth. One night's worth of testing says: It's a fine, functional tool!

Today's blog is a little later than usual, because the first thing I did this morning was sneaking off into the workshop again. I've managed to fully install the wheel stand yesterday plus almost install one of the two spindle stands, and I wanted to see if I couldn't get the second one finished and installed (that is, mortise and tenon done) before blogging time.

Well, it did not quite work (there's still the very last bit of installing and fine-tuning to do) but almost. I'm almost, nearly, virtually done now - there remains to measure in, drill and clean two more holes for two small wedges and then fine-tuning of the drive band and spindle stands. Oh, and cutting and filing the axis, plus drilling a hole for a cotter pin to secure it... but then it's really, finally done.

Since the wheel is made to come apart for transport, all those fine-tuning things and a lot of small details have to be just a little different from what they would be for a fixed wheel - a good amount of things has to be adjustable, or has to fit just snugly enough but not so snug that it won't come apart again. So I do hope fervently that the fine-tuning solution for the spindle stand that I just thought of will work... if not, I'll have to think of something else quickly. (Spoiler: I already have a if-really-necessary-I-can-do-that solution in the back of my head.)

So. Off into the basement again.

Oh, and by the way: You know that your woodworking tools are sharp enough when you only realise you've nicked yourself when you see brightly red spots appear on your working piece...

After the day off yesterday, which was really relaxing and nice (and oh so needed!), I'm now itching to get downstairs and full of sawdust again.

I could not resist to test for the height of the wheel and how it would turn yesterday, though, so I clamped it to the bookshelf and took a turn or three... and figured out that the axis height that I had intended was too low by about 12 cm. So the wheel is now off to new heights, so to say - I have adjusted the height in the plan... good thing that there was some room for adjustments left in all the pieces that I prepared until now.

So the next steps are: mounting the feet in the main board, mounting the wheel to the wheel stand, and then putting the wheel stand into the main board via mortise and tenon. Exciting prospects!

The wheel is finished - not as elegantly joined as I had dreamed, but it's joined, it turns smoothly, and it looks quite nice. Photos tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, when it will be hopefully all done and finished.

Other wheels have turned as well: The Textile Forum programme is now settled, and we are very much looking forward to it! For the news, just visit our Forum website.