An Acadian Wheel!

I know I’m skipping ahead but check out my latest wheel project! We got this Acadian flat rimmed wheel – missing the footman, and the flyer assembly. She also had some interesting homemade nails placed to hold the front maiden and pegs which were so tight it was a real challenge to get her apart!

This is how we recieved her…

She has a 27″ wheel and was begging me for an oil treatment on that first day. Now her wood is looking a little better…

The maidens had to come out, to have their leathers replaced…

First we removed the pegs underneath – they were so solidly in there for so long that we had to use a metal punch and a hammer and pray that nothing went wrong (which it didn’t!) Since the front maiden was nailed as well, that wasn’t the end of it!

Took out that big nail and then a small one in the front which was flush with the table and which very very barely met the wood of the maiden. In the end, somehow, the maiden is left with a shard of nail in her where the nail was. I felt very lucky that none of the original pegs/parts cracked or broke. All the little damages were there already, caused by those little nails.

The leathers needed replacing so I went to the local ‘cowboy store’. LOL. Ok, we call it the cowboy store but it’s not really called that. They do boots, moccasins, cowboy hats, leathers of all kinds, coats, etc. They also have a shoe/boot repair guy/builder guy who very kindly found me the perfect leather – a boot sole, the strongest, thickest, hardest leather he had in the shop. And some black dye to make it black when I’m done 🙂 He looked very confused when I veered off of leather qualities and tried to explain what it was for! Muggles 🙂

I carved the sole a little thinner and bonded it to a piece of tool belt leather (a little thinner but it’s what I had) by scoring it to make it rough, applying glue and clamping it in between two books to keep it flat and straight. Like this…

The pattern was drawn by tracing what as left of the original leather and then I traced a proper leather (on the cpw) for the missing section. It’s a little larger than the cpw leather BUT so was the original and so is the whole wheel I’m making it for. I think the proportion is correct. I’m waiting to drill the hole for the flyer until I have the flyer (seems the sensible thing, to make sure it’s right). My leathers here have holes that vary from 3/8 to 4/8 of an inch.

I cut the leather out with a scroll saw, once dry and then carved and sanded it to the perfect shape for the maiden hole. The maiden has a larger opening at the flyer side than in the back so there’s a little shaping involved.

She will be spinning in no time!

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle – DIY Lazy Kate

Hello 🙂

I have (as you may already have read) just recently acquired a beautiful CPW (canadian production wheel). One of the things with an antique wheel is the fact that one usually only gets one bobbin. Of course more can be made BUT I thought up this solution to the dilemma…

I bought a lot of quill bobbins (from ebay) – 25 of them for a mere $4 + shipping!! They are a good size and quite beautiful actually. Of course, I have a real weakness for antiques/old wood and these have brass AND old wood – HOW could one NOT love them…

They obviously needed a home (or as they call it, a ‘kate’) so that once I’ve wound the singles onto them, I can easily ply off of them.

I found a piece of scrap wood. For real, lol – it was sitting on the porch, an old abandoned piece of a long dead dresser. My son thought it was hilarious that I thought I could make something out of it. I showed him 🙂

I cut two pieces about 12″ each, for the cross bars and split the remainder (about 8″ each) for two supports/legs. I sanded the wood and let it breathe again! (it was happy) I marked holes about two inches in from each end, on each piece – making sure the drill holes were going through the solid part of the wood, not the grooves cut into it from it’s last life. I used a small drill bit to drill most of the way through the base pieces and all the way through the cross bar pieces, used a larger bit (the size of the dowel – I think it was 5/16) to make countersink holes in the cross bars and the dowel holes in between them.

Put her together, waxed the heck out of her (wow did that wood ever soak up wax!) and sanded the tops of the dowels to a roundish shape. (oh yes, the dowels were cut to be about 4 inches tall)

I love how she turned out. Bonus! My Kromski bobbins fit on her perfectly too 🙂 Now I just need a little bit more dowel, to fill in the empty spots 🙂