Wheels from the same family?

When first I moved down here (which is by now more than 18 years ago - how time flies!) I didn't want any more spinning wheels. I had two antiques, they are both good to spin on, and besides, I was weaving more than I was spinning.

Then we started to frequent the local auction house. I didn't actively bid on any spinning wheels, but they started to come my way all the same: "this one didn't sell, can't you take it?"
At some point, I started noticing all these wheels that obviously came from the same maker/workshop - they have a distinctive shape to the screw handle, the treadle is of a shape I've not seen on any other wheel, and they have a "waist" on the table, with a little punched ornament right at the narrowest part. I started to ask around - did anybody perhaps know where they came from? (They do not have a "normal" maker's mark - the ornament could be seen as a mark, I suppose, but I have seen at least 3 different.) No answers for the longest time - .
Some years later, it happens I now own two of them. The two are of very different sizes, with different ornaments, but obviously from the same workshop:

(I do have the flyers, and the bottom of the distaff for the pink one too) And even though they are quite different in sizes, they are unmistakeably from the same workshop - .

And then, quite by mistake, I found that the world-famous maker of wood floors, Kährs in Nybro, like to tell a little story: the founder started out as a maker of spinning wheels (branched out into furniture... "and the rest is history").
So I contacted them, wondering if it was perhaps their wheels I had (and was seeing all around). Disappointment: they do not have an "archived" one, they have no records of the number manufactured etc etc. But they did have a photo, often used in their marketing. (The photo is the top one in this post)
Disappointment again - nothing at all like my waisted ladies.
(The same museum that houses the abovementioned wheel, also has a black waisted wheel with the right screw shape, ornament, maidens...)

UNTIL: the other local museum in Nybro (yes, two historical societies, in a town with about 12 000 inhabitants) has opened an industrial exhibition: industry in Nybro from "then" (end of the 1700s) to now. And they have a waisted spinning wheel, ornaments, maidens... purportedly from Kährs. The museum guide, when asked, said their wheel is "the fancy model". Does he really know? - I don't know how to get further with this research, but the waisted wheels really are quite common hereabouts.

First an overview of the black lady:

Some comparisons of details:

(the inset is of the black maidens, both broken at the tops)

My two and the black one have the arched double uprights (braced to the back leg); the one in Qvarnaslät (of which I don't have a good pic) has a single upright, braced to the back leg. As has this (picture ganked from a for sale ad)

All of them have the same finials, the same treadle shape...
But where are they from? Are they, as the museum guide said, the "fancy" model from Kährs?

...and I have seen at least 4 more of this waisted model, but can't remember if they had single or double uprights. But I do remember that I have seen my "flower" ornament on other wheels.

Help with comparing?

Dear all hawk-eyes out there, can you help?

The original of this picture is very small - this is as big as it can be without losing all definition...(click to biggify):

Is it the same (model) as this (pics not too great; there was not much space):

Both have the split table; there is a brace from the wheel upright to the back of the table; the maiden turnings are at least similar, as are the spokes. The treadle shape is not very distinctive, but they do look similar. Or?

- This is one example of an adjustable front maiden: an oblong hole, and a (missing) nut under the MOA cross-piece. To me this suggests there were two flyers of different size delivered from the beginning.

I'm sure some of you have seen this remarkable machine before. I know I have, but I had forgot the name of the creator. So when I happened to stumble on it again - :

The picture comes from class sculptor Andy Paiko's website, where one can also find a video of a woman spinning wool on it. There are also more pics of the spinning wheel - and don't forget to look at his other creations!

Isn't it fantastic!?!
And to think I live in "the kingdom of Crystal"... gives me ideas, it does!

Local newspapers

Who said that local newspapers mostly contain local gossip?

Well, at least that is what I have always thought. So today I went to the local archive to read Nya Wexiö-Bladet for 1847 - the year that Mlle Granberg was touring the county giving classes in double-spinning.

I anticipated coming home with lot lots of "gossipy" information, such as Joahnna Månstdotter and Lina Andersson did attend the class in Lenhovda, and after only a week were able to spin 3 "pops" (knäpp) weighing only 2 "lod", or somesuch. Hopefully I would find advertisements and, and...
But. No such luck. In fact, almost no luck at all.

I found a few names, but those all belonged to remarkable spinsters from before the classes.

I found no advertisements at all (for things relevant, such as the classes themselves, spinning wheels, "modern" hackles...). Also I found nothing about the actual classes, not even the slightest mention!

What I did find was a kind of "morality", in the form of a conversation between "Mrs X", "the girl" and "the uncle":
Mrs X didn't want to send her maid to the spinning school, but the girl (niece of Mrs X, in fact) was going, because the uncle had said it was a Good Thing To Do.
Enters said uncle, who proceeds to tell the Ladies why [double-flyer] spinning school was such a good idea: it was "ancient" (had been used in Brabant for over 100 years - imagine that!); it would give work to paupers [my comment: why couldn't they get work spinning on a normal wheel, if spinsters were so sought-after?]; he gave a long lecture about the economics [interesting, but it will take some time until I can untangle all the various measurements used]; last, but not least: the Ladies ought to resume the responsibility of being Role Models.
Nearing the end of the economic lecture, Mrs Y enters. She gets all interested, 'cos that would mean she could turn away beggars without any remorse. Mrs X is nicer, she doesn't like to turn away hungry women without giving them something to eat.
The girl is excited, says she wants to go. [But that was her intention from the beginning]

This was quite a long article, but it ended without any mention at all about how to enrol, who was organizing the event(s), when and where they were to take place.

(Ok, so there might have been mentions I didn't see, but if so, it was in the middle of the "running text" - no advertisements, no "marketing".)

Maybe it wasn't so strange that (at least) one of them had to be cancelled due to low interest? I have found, in another publication, that four or five *were* held, one of them with more than 20 students. There were students turned away because of lack of double spinning wheels. (If you follow that link, don't tell anybody. Taking pics was allowed; showing them is not. Makes sense?!?)
So here comes a "legitimate" picture:

The, I don't know, dangers, maybe? of museum catalogues...

The only thing I did was to make another spinning wheel search, this time on the site of Murbergets museum.
After some dead tries I finally found out how to search the whole site, and got some 150 hits.
Several were not spinning wheels (even though they were so tagged), and most wheels had no pictures.

As I was clicking through the detail pages, I came across this text.
Due to the extraordinary text, I felt I had to let you all know how a spinning wheel can be described (my translation, which probably can be re-written to something more fluent, but I think this captures the flavour of the original)(Swedish original below):

Material: Wood, Metal
Technique: Turned, Nailed
Function: To ply thread(s)

Monogram - Initials - Writing: IE Holm
Maker - Location - Affirmed: Teodor Bylund

[The] spinning wheel is used to make thread/yarn from textile material (wool/flax). The wheel itself makes the flyer move. The treadle makes the wheel go round.

The spinning wheel consists of several nicely turned wooden parts. The "table" has three legs, of which two are connected to a crosspiece which also houses the treadle. From the treadle there is a vertical shaft leading to an S-shaped iron. This is an axle, which goes through forks and wheel. The two forks have an upright each, everything fastens to the "table". The "table" is slanted. The flyer mountings are located behind the wheel. A bigger lump comes up and is penetrated by a horizontal stave, at the ends of which two pillars are mounted, the flyer sits between these. The distaff's mounting piece is located at the back end of the table. Newly turned (1991) by Teodor Bylund. The head of the distaff has its own number 13918. At the back end there is a knob for carrying. Drive band is missing. Marked "I E Holm".

(No, I have not used google translate, or any other translation software... it really (REALLY) says there is a bigger lump coming through the table, and that there is a carrying knob at the back end. Try google translate yourselves, if you don't believe me!)
It is a pity there is no picture - I would have liked to see this obviously very different MOA construction.
However, for those of you having trouble with lumps and forks, here are two annotated pictures (click for readability):

OK, IF you have used the auto-translate, read the text on the museum site instead! The auto-translate makes the original Swedish totally... strange.


Material: Trä, Metall
Teknik: Svarvat, Spikat
Funktion: Tvinna tråd

Monogram - Initialer - Påskrift: I E Holm
Tillverkare - Tillverkningsort - Säker: Teodor Bylund

Spinnrocken används för att göra tråd/garn av textilmaterial (ull/lin). Själva hjulet ser till att vingspindeln rör sig. Trampan sätter fart på hjulet.

Spinnrocken består av flera fint svarvade trädelar. "Bordet" har tre ben, varav två fäster nedtill i en tvärslå där också trampan sitter. Från trampan leder en vertikal axel till ett S-format järn. Detta är en axel, vilken löper genom gafflar och rockhjul. De två gafflarna har varsin stötta, alltsammans fäster i "bordet". "Bordet" är snedvinklat. Bakom hjulet sitter vingspindelns fästanordning. En större klump går upp och genomborras av en horisontell stav, i vilkens ändar två pelare fästs, vingspindeln sitter mellan dessa. Längst bak på bordet sitter rockhuvudets ställning. Nysvarvad (1991) av Teodor Bylund. Rockhuvudet eget nummer 13918. Längst bak en knopp att bära i. Drivbandet saknas. Märkt: "I E Holm".

A plethora of pegs

or: what am I looking at, here?

This little wheel is possibly the most well-pegged wheel I have ever seen. The legs are pegged in (straight, or slanting, into the table, so no way to get them out), the uprights too. The MOA is, of course, pegged in place. The back maiden has a slanting peg to secure it to the MOA. Both leathers are pegged in place, through the maidens - the back one with a slanting peg.

All the spokes are pegged to (through) the wheel rim, of course.

BUT: there is one oddity: the secondary uprights are NOT pegged, neither at the top (just inserted in slanting holes), nor at the bottom, where they instead are nailed, with metal nails.

Uprights and front leg pegged from the side:

One of the two nails present:

MOA and maidens:

Drive wheel - rim joins are pegged from the side, spokes through the rim (no "seating holes" for the spokes into the outer rim):

Treadle:

There are bearings for the wheel, too. Guess what - they are pegged in place:

So: what am I looking at, here? Is this an exercise piece?
First, all the pegs. Not only the number, but so many of them are slanting! It is natural to "secure" the leathers, but with slanting pegs through the maidens? (The orifice leather is sewn, though I have seen pegged ones before) The front maiden once had a nut, now lost.
Next, the table decorations. Rather a lot of work, on a piece of wood with a knot almost in the middle of the decoration? And with several (what-do-you-call-it? "help lines"?) showing? (There is one more knot at the back end of the table, too, making three knots showing on top of the table). All "ends" are notched, front and back of the table, front and back of the hole for the tensioning block.

Then there are two (at least) different woods: the wheel rim, the foot plate and the nut under the MOA appears to be oak, while the rest appears to be birch, the table possibly pine. (In my experience, birch is the most common wood for Swedish spinning wheels - and they are usually one wood only).
Looking at the MOA nut, oak doesn't look ideal for making threads; the nut looks kind of "sad" - it is obviously A Good Thing this nut is not very often used.
Also the wheel bearings: thicker than usual, u-shape with "wings" fitted into the upright. They are only half of the upright's width, made of brass.
All these oddities makes me think this may be a practice piece - it is not, IMO, good enough to be a (again, what is the word here?) journeyman's qualifying piece - if, for nothing else, the two very visible knots in the table. But is HAS a maker's mark...

Oh, and it spins nicely. It is my first with a sliding hook.

(Should I add: click images to biggify?)

How to spin better linen yarns

Many authorities "of the time" assert that yarn spun with "the new method" (ie with a DFW of the Mager type) has a much, much better quality - as if consistent grist and twist come automatically with the wheel type. (Maybe it does... after all, I haven't got mine operational yet)

To let you all know as much as I now do, I took a stab at translating the first part of the Book with the Hopeless Title - the part that should instruct us all how to use this famous wheel.

(It can be that you, too, become a bit disappointed with the contents. But I assure you: this is all there is!)

The first part, same as the other, is now available in .pdf-form, the translated variant here with text in both Swedish and (my attempt to translate it into) English. The plate is on the very last page. (Comments on the translation(s) are most welcome!)

There is also the "original" (transcribed, some sort of Swedish) - found here. The drawing is on the last page.

For my local-ish Swedish friends: do you know anything about the Gårdsby Lin-Institut, at Gårdsby outside Växjö, that was in existence 1811-1827 (or -28)? There is a rumour that they used double flyer wheels there, too, but as the Mager type was not known until 1843, I would be very interested to know what kind of DFWs they were using.

How to build your own double (or more!) flyer spinning wheel

As told here, I have borrowed the Ekenmark book with the hopeless title (Afhandling Om Den förbättrade och förenklade Nya Magerska Linspinnings-Methoden, Jemte En wida ändamålsenligare Method, för så wäl Dubbel- som Enkelspinning, med förändring af en wanlig Spinnrock, både för en och flere personer på en och samma gång, hwarigenom den motswarar nyttan af 4 serskilta wanliga spinnrockar, Äfwensom Om bästa sättet, att få linet genom sjelfwa Rötningen mycket finare och mjukare, så att det derigenom blifwer ojemförligt ändamålsenligare till båda Spinning, garn och wäfnader, än hwad genom den wanliga Linrötningen och torkningen kan åstadkommas.
Utarbetad Af GUSTAF EKENMARK och HUSTRU
Med en större Lithografierad Planch
Stockholm Tryckt hos Lundberg & Comp. 1848)

I have also transcribed it (gothic print...), probably with some mistakes here and there.

Today I can offer anybody nerdy enough to want to know how to alter an ordinary saxony type spinning wheel to accommodate as many as 4 flyers, without "compromising" the original wheel: there is one .pdf here with text in both Swedish and (my attempt to translate it into) English - no light reading this (I doubt I have ever encountered sentences as long as in this text... hard to read in Swedish, even harder to make some sort of sense in English). This file has a couple of illustrations enlarged from the drawing (which is on the very last page).

There is also the "original" (transcribed, some sort of Swedish) - found here. No extra illustrations, but the drawing is on the last page.

If I end this post with "enjoy!" - would you think I'm having you on?!?

The plot thickens...

Thanks to my friend Åsa I now have a plan! (A "plan" as in - well, you'll see)

It turns out my DFW is a modified Mager clone.
(Who Mager is? Wait and see, I'll have to read the whole book first.)
It also appears that is it a flyer-lead, bobbin-drag (is that "Irish tension"? I always get confused about the brake type wheels and their terminology).
But there is still one mystery...

Here is the overview of the construction drawing:

The tensioner pulley should be mounted top-down, and apparently wedged in place. (Though the wedge can't be seen, but there is no other fastening shown either)

Two detail pics:

This explains two mystery holes I have - where the green arrow is, mine has holes on both sides. BUT: there should be holes where the red arrow is - holes pointing forward.
On the right-hand maiden (is it called maiden even if it is an integral part of the structure?) there is a hole on the outside, but on the left side there is no hole at all.
(And: "maidens" or "uprights" - they seem to be one and the same piece of wood going from the table to the top. No way these "maidens" have been/can be made to turn!)

Speculating: can it be that there is just ONE brake-band, braking both bobbins at the same time? It would, I think, make the adjustment easier?

(And I still haven't made the axle retainers, so I can't try it out. Yet.)

What I have been doing - nerd alert

It all started with the DFW (Double Flyer Wheel).
I wanted to know where it came from (or, at least, from whereabouts in the country this kind of accelerated driving was known). I had seen something in a (borrowed) book - had to buy it for myself. Was sort of disappointed - there was a wheelwright mentioned, that much was right, but, as it were, only in passing. He had a name and a year (Abraham Hedman, 1738), but that was all there was.
I (thought I) knew I had seen something like it, many years ago, in a museum. Thought I knew which museum. Wrote to them. Wrote to several more museums, while I was "at it". Result: nothing, nada, zilch. A month later, ONE of the (by now 6) museums answered: "I don't have time to go out in the storehouse to look".
Meanwhile, I got a couple of obscure books on ILL, one of them very dull-looking: Den Ångermanländska linslöjden, en historik. (The linen works of Ångermanland, a history). It is a dull text, but once I started to really read it I found lots of, hm, nuggets(?). And lots of food for nerding...

So, here, friends, goes:

Definition of "prime linen": as you (probably will not) remember, "prime linens" come in many classes. They were (at least most of them) 1 1/2 aln (3 ft, or 88-89 cm) wide.
For class 1 there were 2720-2920 ends (or 30-32 ends/cm); for class 8 (which was NOT the finest seen) there were 4120-4 320 ends (or 45-48 ends/cm).
The History book contains some well-described examples, complete with old (and obscure) weights-and-measures.

So I got out the calculator...
One example was described as 39 alnar, 4 1/2 skålpund; 3600 ends, woven in 2299-dent reed.(If I did my calculations right, this means the cloth was 23,2 m long, weighed 1,9 kg - which would translate to 81,9 grams/metre fabric).

OK.

3066 ends x 23,2 metres of cloth = 83 520 metres of warp yarn.
But we have a weft, too. For convenience, I assumed 40 picks per cm (warp density comes out as 40,5) - which gave me another 83 500 metres.
Which gives a total of about 167 000 metres per 1,9 kg of weight.

Now, linen is numbered in Nel (Number English Linen, I believe), where the number tells how many skeins of 300 yards is accommodated in 1 imperial pound.
One yard is 0,91 metres, so 300 yards = 274 metres (rounded), which means we have 167 000 / 274 = 609,5 skeins - let's round a bit carelessly, say 600 skeins.
As an imperial lb (of today) is approx. 0,45 kg, we can go on: ( 600 / 1900 grams) x 450 = 142 (rounded)
which means this particular cloth was woven with a linen singles (*all* "lärft" is singles) of a number somewhere in the vicinity of 140/1. Handspun.

I did several calculations, approaching from different angles, 'cos I was thinking I had made a decimal error somewhere.
But - all of them came up more or less the same. There were several examples described, and they all came out with a yarn count between approx. 120 to 150. Handspun!

A picture from the book, divided in two to make it possible (I hope) to read the writings.

The caption says, roughly;
"These two photos show the strip, with thrums, cut off from the cloth for which Catharina Andersdotter got the Illis Quorum [a royal medal]. The cloth is of the seventh class, is woven through a weaving reed of 2 200 dents, contains 40 knots, or 4000 ends of warp. Every square centimetre thus counts to 40 ends of warp and circa 37 picks of weft. We have found this linen strip in the royal archives [... something "administrative" I can't translate] 1808 - 1811."
I wish... Or, on second thought, maybe not :-)

But the DFW?

Nothing much. This book tells about several "spinning schools" and some competitions - it seems that the DFW spinners always won, but that did not convince "the people". One of the arguments was that a DFW is harder to spin on (heavier to treadle, needs more concentration), and therefore, even if you are more productive/efficient for the first hour(-s - the competitions were 2 hrs), you can't spin for as many hours as a "prime spinner" usually did. Right or wrong?

Anyway. I still don't know anything about my DFW, it still doesn't work (too cold to do what needs to be done on it, the workshop is unheated) - and the only accomplishment I have done is to amass a lot more "worthless knowledge".

Here is another picture from the book:

which shows another principle for a DFW: one MOA, two flyers. Therefore it has to have two drive bands, I think - and imagine tying two drive bands so that the tensioning works for both, at the same time...?!?

Waiting for more ILL books, and perhaps I have to do some "hands-on" museum search, and...

M PET:SON

Yes, I'm still here.
And one of these days, I'll tell you about what I have been doing: nerding. (Can it be used as a verb? It certainly feels like it...)

Meanwhile, let me present one of my old spinning wheels, name of Findus (not a very good pic, but the best I could do - many discarded pics before this...)

Here is the maker's mark:

For the Swedes, it will now be obvious (I think) why he is called Findus. For all others: Findus is a cat who owns an old man called Pettson - many delightful (children's) books, issued by Opal bokförlag. (It seems some of them are translated to English. I highly recommend them to all cat lovers out there, no need to have children as an "excuse"...)

Since I love both Findus and his old man, and it did not work to link to "his" pages on Opal, I decided to help you non-Swedes with a link to amazon - here goes: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Nordqvist%2C%20Sven

Putting on the tension

The double flyer wheel is now dusted, and the wheel that drives the flyers can be taken out. So far I haven't been able to get off the bent nail that holds the other wheel in place. Of course that nail sits on the treadle-side of the axle... It looks like I may have to saw it off.

The dead leather bearings for the left flyer are out (and some of the paint with them, but that couldn't be helped). I think I probably will have to change the other (painted) bearings, too.

The left flyer is now tied in place with cords, to make trying out different placements of the (probable) tensioner possible.

There are two possible ways that I can think of.

Either the tensioner was correctly mounted as it was (coming up through the frame). As it can't be raised enough to lift the drive band, the drive band has to be threaded through the "tensioner" before knotting, and as the tensioner has only one pulley, this is the one possible path:

Or it wasn't correctly mountetd. If the tensioner is mounted the other way. It can then depress the drive band to create tension - but both turns of the band have to go under the pulley, which doesn't look right, either:

Any suggestions?

I have also found that the right-hand distaff is not original. The right-hand finial (the non-threaded one) is "clumsier" than the other (see pics in the first post), the distaff arm is slightly thicker and the distaff istself has too many knife marks (it has been carved after the turning).
I have, of course, tried to find pictures of DFWs.
On those which have included distaffs, all of them have had only one. Why is that? To me, it made good sense to have two: even on the most perfectly dressed distaff it could happen that the spinner got hold of "both ends" of a fibre?

It was a nice and sunny day...

and we decided to take a little trip. Once we reached the destination, it was much colder and windier than at home, so the walking was cut much shorter than we had thought.
When we saw the sign to a flea market we hadn't been to, we went there instead.

On top of a shelf I spotted something

It lacked one of the flyers, the paint job was sloppy and it was too expensive for a decrepit, albeit interesting, spinning wheel. Then I spotted the other flyer, found that the bobbin turned freely and the drive pulley screw was not rusted - and it was threaded for spinning S.
So I took it down.
Everything that should turn, turned. Some things not supposed to move, moved a bit too much, but on the whole, it seemed to be (nearly) in working order.
It came home with me.

On further examination, the paint job was more than sloppy, and also consisted of at least two different paints. The outer white flakes, under that there is another (whiter) white. In some places the inner white has flaked, too - there seems to be a reddish paint under that.
At least the outer white was painted on without disassembling, but I managed to unscrew the flyer assembly with patience and some grease.

The missing left flyer's what's-it-called (the leather pieces) will take some fiddling to replace, as they, too, are "painted in".
Also the drive wheels will not come off, because they are secured in place with nails in the back, and one of the, hm, "stops" on the front is missing, too.

The "accelerating" drive wheels are interesting. I have seen something like this many years ago in Ångermanland (which, perhaps, tallies with the "prime linens"... Grenander wrote some about double-flyer wheels, but of course I have returned the book now. Maybe I have to borrow it again...). If I measured correctly, the fast wheel has a ratio of 2,5 compared to the slow.

I suppose this is the tensioner for the drive band. It moves freely, fastens with a wedge. (Hmm - wedge? Really?) But how it the drive band supposed to go - over or under? If it goes under, it is difficult to replace, as the pulley doesn't come out?

And, at the back there is this little thing, about 7-8 cm, pivoting not-quite-in-the-middle. What can it be?

The wheel has a couple of reparations done to it - one of the flyer uprights has a piece replaced, one of the flyer uprights has a new finial and the distaffs are slightly different.

And the flyers are painted, too. Even the hooks.