Let's talk about... spinning. If you've heard me talk about spinning, you have probably heard me say that no matter what tools or techniques you use, spinning is always "take fibres, add twist".  Whether you use a stick, or whether you use a modern new-fangled industrial spinning machine.

The way in which these modern new-fangled industrial spinning machines introduce twist, though, is rather... creative. It all starts with the Spinning Jenny and now having several spindles served by one spinner, and not just one (or two). That's also when industrialised spinning starts to rely on slivers, or roving, or whatever the thing called Vorgarn in German is called in the context - thin, already drafted-out fibre bands with sometimes a little twist already inserted.

At some point, the spinner is replaced by clockwork and you have the self-actuator. And then a similar process happens as in pre-industrial spinning: While the self-actuator is still doing, essentially, spindle-spinning with its two phases of drafting and spinning and then winding, the ring-spinning machine copies the flyer wheel action (only multiplied and much faster) and spins and winds in one go.

(By the way, I blame the invention of the flying shuttle and John Kay for this. Faster weavers started this escalation, and now here we are today, with air for everything. I'll come to that later.)

And then someone came up and made machine spinning even faster by open-end spinning, where you basically rotate the fibres and pull out a string of them - similar to when you'd pull a bedsheet out of a spinning washing machine. It would twist up, and so do the fibres.

Because there's an event coming up where I might need to know, at least roughly, the difference between how these spinning machines work, I finally read up on the stuff coming after ring-spinning (which was the most recent I did know). Everything that came afterwards sort of seemed more like magic to me (because, as we all know, any technology that is sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic).

Now I've read that nifty explanation of "imagine pulling out a bedsheet from a rotating washing machine drum", and apart from imagining it to be rather heavy, unwieldy, and potentially also very wet, it did click in my brain and now I get rotor spinning.

There was only one thing left to conquer: The Vortex. Or, more precisely... vortex spinning.

So I looked around, and read a bit of some papers here and there, and wondered how that would work. Because, you see, in all the other methods, one end of the process chain is always rotating. You have your fibre supply at one end, and the wound-up yarn at the other end, and one of them needs to rotate to get the twist in; you can't just add twist in the middle and have both ends fixed, as that would build up reverse twist in both parts. 

I had come far enough to know that there are no moving mechanical parts in the vortex spinning anymore, and that there is airstreams used to introduce circular motion in some way. But you don't have rotation in one of the ends that way, so my poor little brain sort of stopped there, and since it is clearly possible, declared it to be something akin to magic.

Well. Now I've read some more, and it's not magic. It's worse. It's cheating.

Vortex spinning does not take a bundle of fibres and adds twist to them, as all the other methods do in some way. Vortex spinning takes a bundle of fibres (the sliver), splits off some of these fibres and wraps them around the rest. 

I think that's not proper spinning. I do guess that yes, if you're generous, you can say it's core-spun. But... well. 

(If you're interested now and want to see for yourself, you can read this open-source article about vortex spinning, and there's diagrams towards the end that show how the thingummy is build up (where, interestingly, they still have something they call "the spindle") and a diagram that clearly shows the principle of wrap-a-few-to-simulate-a-yarn that is used here.)

Now I am a little sad. I had expected, um, proper spinning. At least it's fast, though!

The Great Wheel had its little outing, I once again got to appreciate how much more evenly I can spin with the spindle and distaff as compared to the wheel, and on the other hand how much faster the wheel is. 

As usual on an event like this, I got to take one quick break (when the guys from the next tent over were doing their fighting show) to dash out of my spot, re-fill my water bottle, get a coffee and a bite to eat, and go back. It was also very sunny on Sunday, so even though the tent provided shade, it got quite hot. Enter the Glorious Medieval Cooling System: The linen underdress and linen headwear will be very, very cooling if wet. Thus part of my water bottle's contents did not go inside of me, but into my dress to wet some of the underdress, and on my head. That worked very well, and kept me comfortable even through the hottest bits of the day.

Then, at the end of our festivities, I found one of the friendly museum ladies to take some pictures of me spinning:

As you can see on the floor, I didn't even make too much of a mess! 

The thing about a medieval-style Great Wheel? It's really Great, as in Large. Looking at images, the wheel appears to be really huge, compared to the spinners. And when one thinks about it, that is sort of understandable - after all, the aim is to get a lot of twist quickly, and there are no gears involved. So the size difference between the wheel and the disc on the spindle (often called whorl, but I find that confusing) has to be as large as possible.

When I built my reconstruction, I was thus looking for a size that would compare to the illustrations we have, and of course with a look at its intended use - demonstrations. Which meant it also had to come apart easily, and the single pieces had to fit into the car. 

Which they do. The wheel itself has its own special spot right under the roof, where it's built to fit perfectly:

The board end in the foreground belongs to the bottom (main) board. The rest is one box with the small pieces (like the wedges, drive band, and spindles) and one pack with legs and the holders for spindle and wheel. 

So now I just have to add the rest of the equipment, and we're ready to roll!

(Ingelheim. Sunday. See me there if you can, and say hello!)

The wheel is set up, and it's been far too long since I've last taken it for a spin - it took me a bit to get it all running smoothly again. Though that is also due to trying the other spindle, which (still) does not work as nicely as the one I usually have.

Why? Well, it would be nice to know... The wheel is always a little wobbly, and depending on how the individual bits are aligned (and they have a tendency to shift a bit during use), the drive band stays on... or not. The "other" spindle has more of a tendency to shift, and there's only one good groove on it, so as soon as the drive band manages to hop out of that groove, it's gone and off completely. 

As there's no grooves or higher sides on the rim of the wheel, the drive band will also tend to slip off if the wheel is not well enough aligned. That can happen if the fixing wedge of the wheel support works itself loose, or if the whole thing is leaning a bit to one side and the wheel wanders on its axle, or if it's put on the wrong way around (though it is theoretically symmetrical, it isn't quite).

So. All those are reasons enough to take it out and give it a little test drive before it appears at a demonstration, but the main reason is actually for me to get some practice in... or I will have a very, very tired right arm very quickly otherwise! 

Because I have to wet and stretch the skeins anyways, the plan for the warp yarns this time was that I add some sizing in that process, saving Silvia (who will do the weaving) from that extra prep step.

As it's here and available already, we settled on animal glue for the sizing. The idea behind sizing is to strengthen the threads against friction and abrasion on the loom, making it easier to weave and giving a better end result. So I dissolved some animal glue in warm water, bathed the skeins in their hot bath to set the twist, pressed out as much excess water as possible and gave them a good long soak (about half an hour) in the gluey liquid. 

And because I arrived at the conclusion that it might be interesting for you to watch, here's a video showing... spinning. Or, to be more precise, drafting. That's me production spinning for the current project, and the bobbin that I made this video on averaged out at a little more than 160 m per hour. (Personal best.) All you will see is my drafting motion, and I found it very, very boring to look at, but then I've looked at this from a slightly different angle for a lot of hours by now, and it's much more interesting if you're actually doing it. (Still of limited interest though. A hundred times a very little will still not be much...)

Again, this is possible because the wool is very easy to spin and the thread is in my absolute comfort zone, thickness-wise. I need to concentrate more than I have to do at slower speeds, and stopping the spinner for adjusting the winding lead on the flyer has to be done slowly and with care, otherwise there will be a lot of slack thread. Similarly, starting up again should be done slowly.

Both hands are working here, by the way, though the front hand (my left hand, I'm strongly left-handed) does most of the moving. The other, though, subtly presses down on the fibre a way back or lets go, which helps me to draft evenly, and turns the end of the top to help catch the fibres that I want to catch.

The spinner can do a max speed of about 1650 rpm, and it's set to a little less than 3/4 max, so it's probably runnning somewhere around 1000 to 1200 rpm. I have about 1.5 bobbins to go for finishing the warp, that's a bit more than 1.2 kilometers. And then... the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the proof of the yarn is in the weaving (and then wearing). 

As I've stated in one of the previous posts, there's a lot of different statements about spinning speeds around on the Internet. They are, in a lot of cases, outrageously high. 

In a quite well-known, frequently cited book by Almut Bohnsack about spinning, there's also a list of how much could be spun on a handspindle... and these numbers, again, are very high. Outrageously high, if you ask me. Careful reading of the text, however, shows that for getting these numbers, the author measured the rotational speeds achievable by the different spindles, and did that measuring right after flicking them, with no resistance by the thread to speak of. These were in the ballpark of c 3000 rpm - and then, this number was taken as the maths basis to calculate how many twists per metre you need for yarns in different thicknesses (all of them very, very thin),  and how long it would take for the spindle to deliver this number of twists. No consideration of drafting speed or winding up, and no taking into account that the spindle slows down, and that twist in the yarn will make turning the spindle harder.

Other calculations on the 'Net sound like it's a normal thing for someone to do close to 250 or even 400 m per hour, but if you follow the numbers to the source, they are extrapolations from - you may have guessed it - the speeds achieved during competitions that ran for 10 or 15 minutes.

So. Statements and calculations like these have resulted in the fact that I have very, very little trust in spinning speed numbers stated somewhere, without a very detailed explanation on how the numbers were derived. There's a huge difference between spinning for a few minutes and timing it, and spinning for production. Back in the days when I lacked experience and was going for the first reconstruction projects with hand-spun yarn, I did my time budget calculations from a 15 minute test spin. Even though I tried to work at normal speed, I was much, much quicker than in the actual process. Lehrgeld, we call that in German. (Tuition fee would be the translation...)

Which means that I trust the numbers that I have for myself, and timings that I have taken myself (like for the spinning experiment), and there's a few other people that I know and whose numbers I will take for true. 

And there's still issues with these numbers... because comparability of spinning speeds also depends on the type of yarn you are doing, if you're using the same tool. For instance, if I'm spinning with hand-spindle and distaff and I'm making yarn of c 0.9 mm diameter and with a really high twist, someone else making yarn with 1.2 mm diameter and medium twist may be much faster than I am... but might not be faster doing the same yarn type. Someone spinning for speed and not minding if the yarn is rather irregular - can this be compared to someone spinning yarn for a specific purpose and going for consistency? If I get a bad spot in my production, I will interrupt the process and fix the spot (unless it's within the acceptable parameters, then I'll just go "huh" and let it slide). That takes time - I would not do that if going for speed.

So in case you're now interested in my speeds... my hand-spindle spinning is reliably at about 60 m per hour. I haven't tried speed-spinning there; this is "explain and demo" or production speed spinning. I'm not using my treadle wheels for spinning anymore as they are too slow, but the e-spinner will get me between 80 to 160 m per hour for production spinning, with most of the yarns in the 90-110 m per hour range. Doing ahundredfiftyplus takes a good bit of concentration, and is only possible sustainably if it's a very well-prepared fibre suited for this and a yarn thickness that is in my comfort zone. 

If you're spinning, I'd be happy to hear about your thoughts about speed, and about your speeds. My recommendation is to get a stopwatch that you place next to your wheel; that way you can track your spinning time easily and accurately. Time yourself for spinning for a whole bobbin, and then measure out the whole bobbin, that will get rid of a lot of the variation in your spinning.