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Spinning wheel rebah.

Ryan Mooney

Ryan Mooney

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The Gorge Area, Oregon
This is going to be kind of a long thread.. as there's a lot to do. I'm putting it in flatwork even though most of it's turning.. although there's going to be flatwork as well .. sooo...

A friend picked up an old spinning wheel recently, I'm using it as a kick off point to rehab both it and one of the other wheels we've gotten. More pictures of the wheels later.

I've been kind of poking at them, measuring things, buying some parts, and deciding how to tackle some of the problems.

Today I started out with a small project, replacing a locking knob that had been lost to the mists of time. This was a slightly more difficult than usual replacement because the knob is threaded.. and I have no idea what the thread use was...

Missing piece goes here.. to lock this upright (which holds what's called the "flyer" in place.. more on that later.. I also need to replace some wooden bits on the flyer..)

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So the first step was to make a small form from some canning wax and reproduce a template of the piece. With some careful carving and gentle persuasion the existing hole acts as a die for the wax (and yes I broke two pieces before getting a "good" one).

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I had some ideas about making a pitch gauge with dykem (which is why it's blue..) but that didn't work.. so using a pair of fine dividers we can measure the thread center-center

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Use that to score out a piece of blue tape...

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And once the tape is wrapped around a piece of rock maple turned to the OD of the template.. we have our thread pitch..

I'm cutting the first pass of the bottom of the thread form here with a small razor saw to both mark the center and cut out some of the thread depth while still on the lathe.

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Also marked the "peak" of the threads with a pencil and tried not to remove the pencil mark while carving.. here I'm also cross checking pitch width at the peak with the dividers (I spot checked it all the way out on 4 sides.... it was pretty close - it looks slightly off because I've already started carving).

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From there it's just carefully whittling the threads out.. I used a very small chip carving knife and a fine needle file to finish them.

They might look a smidge rough...

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And they're *maybe* just a wee tad loose (I was aiming for a smidge loose because wood.. movement..), but danged if they didn't screw right in just about perfect on the first try.. I had to trim the end of the threaded bit a little so the knob was "almost" snug to the piece once it's locked in place (I had intentionally cut it maybe 1/8" long to start to give some adjustment room).

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I did some other stock prep, but that's the only really interesting bit for today.
 
On to the flyer. This is the part that spins around with the bobbin on it and has a sheave on the end (missing in this picture) that's called a whorl (almost all of them have left hand threads fyi).

As you can see this existing one is not in great shape. The shaft was bent, the hooks are toast, the one arm is busted, and the wood is pretty ratty overall.

First order of business was to take it apart and straighten the shaft with some judicious love taps.

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Here's the whole thing taken apart, you can see the square->round transition on the shaft, which is our next order of business.


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So I busted out a file, and some 1/4" keyway stock to make a broach (pretty soft.. but good enough for what we need to do here.. if I was doing a lot I'd buy some O1 or similar and harden it).

I chucked it up in the lathe with a regular wood chuck without any jaws, put down some paper to cover the ways and got to filing.

The stepped cutter idea on the broach proved to be a terrible idea.. don't do that. I ended up filing it back to just a plain single square end.

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Worked great on a test piece..

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And.. promptly split the piece of oak I had scheduled for this project right in half. Oak might not have been the best choice either...

So Filed back the double "cutter" because I'm pretty sure it was mostly just causing wedging.

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And started over with some maple.. which went a lot smoother. The square part of the shaft was set in at a 45d angle, I think maybe the idea was to minimize splitting? Would that actually help? I'm not sure.. Anyway this round of broaching (with a lot of extra clamping..) went pretty smooth.

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Leaving lots of extra meat in the middle for turning it. The broach can now also act as a mandrel!

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Wheeee it's full of air! Some careful work with a 5/8" gouge, then a 3/8" on the inside.. and finally some delicate bits with a parting tool and skew chisel for the details on the nozzle.

Note that if you're making one of these make the outside quite a bit larger than you'd think you need (1/4" or so) as the turning near the ends gets tricky with alignment, etc.. so a little extra wood is super nice to have.. it turned out ok but I didn't have any material to spare.

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Then bandsawed out "most" of the inside and finished with a bunch of fine rasp work. I'm using a scrap of wood as basically a guide board to measure each arm's at the same distance back with the calipers to try to get them "pretty close" to the original.

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And reassembled.

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Next up I need to make the hooks for it, some extra bobbins which is probably the next big project, a few bushings, and some work on the treadle/footman. The on to the next wheel. To be continued.
 
Nice job on that locking knob. I probably would have just drilled out the hole and put in a dowel then drilled that and threaded with the wood tap and die set I have. Or, would that be a sacrilege?
 
Frank Fusco said:
I probably would have just drilled out the hole and put in a dowel then drilled that and threaded with the wood tap and die set I have. Or, would that be a sacrilege
Click to expand...
Yeah it's a call, that definitely would have worked. If the inside threads had been in worse shape that's probably the best solution. I generally try to keep as much of the original as possible but in some cases it doesn't make sense from a functional perspective.
 
Next up bobbins, which start out looking a lot like pens...

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And indeed I'm turning the rest of this on a pen mandrel.. although I don't have bushings to match.. So I made some.. several sets in fact..

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Centers turned with some tenons.. to fit the sides.. The tenons are to short and I'd have done this a bit differently.. but it's working out; This is basically a bunch of trade offs between light and strong. So the hole in the center of the shaft is over sized to lighten it.. BUT that doesn't leave enough wood for strong tenons really. We'll deal with that later.

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Glue up #1 on these.. Just roughly "almost round" pieces for the ends.

You can also see my "make it stronger" solution here which are a couple of center drilled plugs to thicken the ends. I'll eventually also put some delrin bushings in there.. so the center holes on these are a tad bit over sized still. The flyer shaft is also pretty heavily tapered so I can't just drill and assemble to size before turning because of that (and my pen mandrel is larger than the smaller end of the flyer shaft as well..).

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Leading us to glue up #2...

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Some layout..

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Now it's just a series of making things round to match..
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I've been turning the major dimensions then working in the curves to try to get them "pretty close" to the same..

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I had to make another allen wrench aka prison shank turning tool to get into the whorl side to turn the string groove. If I was doing a lot more of these.. IDK.. maybe a slightly thicker negative rake scraper form tool (ideas welcome?).

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One down.. five to go (why six? well... you need four to make three ply yarn - three for the strands and one to ply onto - and I'm less than perfectly confident in my ability to get four reliably.. so worst case there'll be a couple of spares).

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And that was it for today. At least the parts I'm happy to talk about :D
 
On to other parts (although the bobbins still need finish applied..)

The treadle has seen better days. It's a rather clever sliding dovetail that spans the two arms and is held in place by a couple of cross angled wooden pins in one end and one pin in the other.

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Bit of work with the old hand plane to shave to fit (after roughing on the bandsaw ofc)

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Pins were kind of shot so an impromtu dowel plate makes some to match..

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Some amber shellac on the new treadle plate and a couple spit coats of blond over the whole thing after assembly and this piece is actually done! (ok I still need to make new leather washers for it.. but the woodworking part is finished)

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Yes I'm leaving the wear marks, there's nothing wrong with them :)

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Also fired up the old hot-hide glue pot and glued up the loose joins in the wheel...

There is clamping in theory..

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And clamping in practice... Maybe if I'd been able to put some stiction on the cross clamp blocks it'd have worked (plastidip?) Either way it's smart to have a backup plan for when your backup plan for clamping doesn't work out.. Nice to have a band clamp or four laying around.

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