A Not So Secret Garden: My First Spinning Wheel...

Still feverish with the spinning bug that bit me, I have been spending the couple of days building my first spinning wheel, complete with flyer and bobbin assembly. I based my wheel on the dodec design which can be found plenty on the internet. I decided not to build the dodec wheel out of wood but instead, use a bicycle wheel to save time. Except for the wheel, the screws and the nuts and bolts, most are recycled materials. It took me some time to get it working. I had to re-make the flyer whorl several times because the drive band keeps on slipping and the flyer will not turn. I found out that for whorls, you use V-groove to get more traction while for bobbins, you use U-groove and should be very smooth to allow for the scotch tension to slip. It seems to work now. I can make minute adjustments on the scotch tension to control the rate the bobbin pulls and winds the yarn. But the spinning wheel still needs a lot of work and tweaking. I have to redo the treadle. With the light and simple spindle assembly, the treadle works fine, but with the flyer and bobbin, the treadle will not work at all. I have to crank the wheel with my hand. So far, all the problems I have encountered, can also be found on a good commercially produced spinning wheel, so I guess mine is ok for now.

But, even if I managed to perfect my wheel, still there is one factor I have not addressed. Fiber preparation, particularly cotton. I am still using medical cotton to test my wheel and it is very difficult to draft. In the west, spinners use a special tool called carders to prepare fibers, or they can buy fibers in different forms like sliver, rover, roll logs, punis... these are ready for spinning. However, we do not have these in our country. We do have spinning traditions here in our country. I believe, if I am not mistaken, it was in Ilocos where the masts of the great galleons of the west were weaved. But, tabacco industry later became more profitable, and we lost the cotton industry. I still have not found any reference as to how we traditionally prepare our cotton for weaving. I am pretty sure we did not use carders. But our traditional hand cranked spinning wheels were very much like the ones used in other asian countries, like in Laos. In Laos, they use a simple tool similar to a bow, and they use the string part to beat a pile of cotton inside a basket until it is all fluffy. Then with a long thin stick, they rolled the fluffy cotton tightly into a punis form similar to India. Carders, I can not make, but a bow with a string, and a basket, that I can make. Our ancestors probably use the same technique. There are still a few weavers in Ilocos which still use the old method, maybe I should take a visit.

Flyer and bobbin assembly...