Wheels are home!

I don't have my great wheel reassembled, but man oh man, did Bill do a
good job overhauling the old girl. He had to drill the spokes and
re-peg them with dowels, and told me he had to put the wheel in his
steambox with weights on it to bring it back into something resembling
true so it would quit throwing the driveband. He made a custom
minor's head for it that runs at a 190:1 ratio and I was spinning
froghair from some combed wool top he had around, so I guess I now
have no excuse for not spinning [cotton, cashmere, qiviut] from my
stash.

The saxony has a new flyer/bobbin/whorl and runs at 12:1, which is a
skosh faster than my little sax that runs at ~8:1. I've been spinning
froghair on it since I got it home.

The gossip is good for collecting dust - spins like a dog, but one
tension for two flyers, and such a hard draw-on that even spinning
flax on the thing would be questionable. I guess I'll put it on Ebay
and try to find it a retirement home where it can sit quietly in a
corner without earning its keep.

The weasel needs more work than I was willing to pay Bill to do. The
work it needs is pretty simple, just time-consuming, so I'll probably
see what I can do myself before I consign it to Decorating Hell.

Tomorrow should be a clear dry day, so I'll take the two working
wheels out back and get after them with the 4-0 steel wool and the
BriWax. Bill did some cleanup on the great wheel so it looks a
thousand percent better than it did when I took it into the shop, but
it still needs some elbow grease. The sax is nearly black and needs
LOTS of elbow grease. So much for my manicure (not!) *g*

I will of course post photos when I have everybody cleaned up and
shining for the camera!

Michelle
Doing the Too Many Wheels dance

In article , SlinkyToy
wrote:

Dancing with you my girl.......I know all about it, with only one pair of
hands, it gets a bit hairy at times when you have more than one
wheel.....(grinning) So dancing it is......

So far I have not seen an old walking wheel with out the wheel being
warped. My friend has one sitting in her living room. The drive belt
gets throw off, because of it. It now sits in her living room as a hanger
for all kinds of textiles she has gathered from all around the world.

where did you get the gossip wheel, what is it's history.....??

Els

I don't have my great wheel reassembled, but man oh man, did Bill do a
good job overhauling the old girl. He had to drill the spokes and
re-peg them with dowels, and told me he had to put the wheel in his
steambox with weights on it to bring it back into something resembling
true so it would quit throwing the driveband. He made a custom
minor's head for it that runs at a 190:1 ratio and I was spinning
froghair from some combed wool top he had around, so I guess I now
have no excuse for not spinning [cotton, cashmere, qiviut] from my
stash.

The saxony has a new flyer/bobbin/whorl and runs at 12:1, which is a
skosh faster than my little sax that runs at ~8:1. I've been spinning
froghair on it since I got it home.

The gossip is good for collecting dust - spins like a dog, but one
tension for two flyers, and such a hard draw-on that even spinning
flax on the thing would be questionable. I guess I'll put it on Ebay
and try to find it a retirement home where it can sit quietly in a
corner without earning its keep.

The weasel needs more work than I was willing to pay Bill to do. The
work it needs is pretty simple, just time-consuming, so I'll probably
see what I can do myself before I consign it to Decorating Hell.

Tomorrow should be a clear dry day, so I'll take the two working
wheels out back and get after them with the 4-0 steel wool and the
BriWax. Bill did some cleanup on the great wheel so it looks a
thousand percent better than it did when I took it into the shop, but
it still needs some elbow grease. The sax is nearly black and needs
LOTS of elbow grease. So much for my manicure (not!) *g*

I will of course post photos when I have everybody cleaned up and
shining for the camera!

Michelle
Doing the Too Many Wheels dance

--
I have added a trap for spammers......niet.....

On Fri, 17 Oct 2003 16:12:13 -0700, (Els van
Dam) wrote:


where did you get the gossip wheel, what is it's history.....??

Els

Hi Els.

Suspicious minds think the gossip was made by a woodworker who didn't
understand how a spinning wheel worked. Bill (Wyatt,
http://www.wyattwheels.com) thinks it was probably made for decoration
only and happens to be just-barely-functional purely by accident. The
thing weighs next to nothing so is probably made from pine or some
other soft wood. It has a bad paint-marker decoration job reminiscent
of Norwegian tole painting (the real stuff, not the schlocky crafts
fair type) including lines drawn on the turned cylindrical parts to
suggest decorative turning. The intials "EB" are stamped
(upside-down) into one end of the table. Neither Bill nor I think
this is the same "EB" whose initials appear on so many old Quebec
wheels.

I bought the gossip (and the walker, and the big sax and the weasel)
from the estate of a woman who was a production weaver and
sometime-spinner. The equipment had been in storage for ~40 years per
her son, himself about 70 years young. Per him, his mother started
spinning as a young girl on the east coast, moved to the west coast
(taking her wheels), then spent many years in the Santa Fe area before
finally retiring in the Temple/Waco area. I have misplaced the
gentleman's email AND forgotten his mother's name, so I'm sort of at a
dead end researching the wheels.

The weasel is a curious item. One leg is wood that matches the bench
and upright; one leg appears to be made of hand-whittled ashe juniper
(junk trees around here and common as cockroaches in undeveloped
areas); one leg is a piece of bamboo that was cut green and notched,
then that end collapsed and forced into the hole in the table. The
table and post are wood of some sort, as is the clicker gear. The
worm screw that the arms fit onto is made of bamboo, and the wickets
that hold the worm in place are also bamboo, pegged in with
hand-hammered square nails. I need to remove the clicker gear, dowel
up the hole it is in currently, and drill it a new hole about 1/2"
higher than the current one is centered, then line the new hole with a
leather bearing and put it back together. While I'm doing that I need
to cut a new clicker gear thing as the one it has is worn to nubs.
Bottom line, it needs a lot of work that I probably won't do, so I'll
hope some yuppy needs to decorate a "country retreat" *gag*

The great wheel is 100% oak, with a few replacement parts made of
mesquite that Bill fabricated. The minor's head is new, made of
whatever he had on hand - I wasn't complaining about the mismatch, as
he fabricated it from scratch when none of the minor's heads he had on
hand would work with the drive wheel. The cleaning Bill did brought
out the grain but didn't bring out the color of the wood much, so
that's my job this weekend. He got off most of the dirt, I need to do
the polishing.

We *think* the saxony has an oak bench, but the thing is so filthy
we're unsure of the rest of the wheel. With luck I'll get the great
wheel cleaned up in the morning and will be able to spend the rest of
the day on the sax to find out what's under all the grunge. She's a
sweet little spinner and I may not be able to let her go...

Oh Slinky, I am delighted for you - after all this messing
about......Enjoy......Cheers.....Cher


"SlinkyToy" wrote in message
...
I don't have my great wheel reassembled, but man oh man, did Bill do a
good job overhauling the old girl. He had to drill the spokes and
re-peg them with dowels, and told me he had to put the wheel in his
steambox with weights on it to bring it back into something resembling
true so it would quit throwing the driveband. He made a custom
minor's head for it that runs at a 190:1 ratio and I was spinning
froghair from some combed wool top he had around, so I guess I now
have no excuse for not spinning [cotton, cashmere, qiviut] from my
stash.

The saxony has a new flyer/bobbin/whorl and runs at 12:1, which is a
skosh faster than my little sax that runs at ~8:1. I've been spinning
froghair on it since I got it home.

The gossip is good for collecting dust - spins like a dog, but one
tension for two flyers, and such a hard draw-on that even spinning
flax on the thing would be questionable. I guess I'll put it on Ebay
and try to find it a retirement home where it can sit quietly in a
corner without earning its keep.

The weasel needs more work than I was willing to pay Bill to do. The
work it needs is pretty simple, just time-consuming, so I'll probably
see what I can do myself before I consign it to Decorating Hell.

Tomorrow should be a clear dry day, so I'll take the two working
wheels out back and get after them with the 4-0 steel wool and the
BriWax. Bill did some cleanup on the great wheel so it looks a
thousand percent better than it did when I took it into the shop, but
it still needs some elbow grease. The sax is nearly black and needs
LOTS of elbow grease. So much for my manicure (not!) *g*

I will of course post photos when I have everybody cleaned up and
shining for the camera!

Michelle
Doing the Too Many Wheels dance


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