Great wheels are enchanting. I can
say this without market research to back me up because
even my father (who is not a real fan of fiber) couldn’t
resist the siren call of my great wheel when they first met. He
approached her casually and ran a hand softly across her newly
oiled finish, but even after he took a seat and pretended to be
talking about other things, I saw him glancing repeatedly in her
direction. The same thing has happened to a visiting electrician,
carpenter, and an academic—all non-knitters. Fiber lover
or not, you can’t help being curious.
I first learned to spin on a great wheel
when I was a kid, during a week-long fiber workshop at Old
Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts, but I didn’t have the chance to spin
on another until I found myself in Norman Kennedy’s Vermont
kitchen for an advanced spinning workshop at the Marshfield
School of Weaving in the fall of 2010. He has several, all quirky
but working antiques. I planned to focus on flax during the
workshop, but before I knew it, there I was at the great wheel.
I had always wanted one of my own, but every antique I encountered
in my price range had too many health issues for me to take
the leap, and I lacked the means to buy a custom made great
wheel (although a girl can dream...). But after falling under
the spell of Norman’s wheels, I ended up buying one of
the great wheels that Marshfield’s owner, Kate Smith,
had for sale in her barn. (I’ll let you imagine how I
explained coming home with a wheel that used up two weeks
of grocery money and was half the length of our dining room.)
Great wheels are driven
spindle wheels and are also called wool
wheels, high wheels, walking wheels, or muckle wheels (a
Scottish term). Traditionally, flyer wheels were often referred
to as low wheels or flax wheels in relation to the high or
wool wheel. Of course, you can spin a variety of fibers on
either wheel, but each machine has its particular strengths,
and the old terminology was a nod to that. The anatomy of
a driven spindle wheel is simple: a large drive wheel is turned
by hand, with a drive band connecting the drive wheel to the
pulley on the spindle. A tensioning device allows the user
to move the head post closer to or further away from the great
wheel to allow enough tension for the drive band to drive
the pulley and thus the spindle. But there is no take up because
driven spindles require the spinner to stop and wind on after
each “make” of
yarn is complete.
Great wheel spinning heads are generally
one of three kinds: a bat head (the spindle fits into a
paddle-shaped piece of wood);
Bat head
a plain direct
drive (basically a bat head without
the paddle: the spindle is supported
by two maidens and a mother-of-all);
or a Miner’s head (an accelerating
head with an additional pulley to increase the ratio;
the great wheel drives the larger pulley on the accelerating
head, which in turn drives the smaller pulley on the
spindle).
Miner's or accelerating head
The
Miner’s head (also sometimes spelled “Minor’s
head”) was an early 19th century invention that
made the great wheel even more efficient as a spinning
tool. Ratios with an accelerating head can be in the
neighborhood of 230 to 1.
Great wheel spinning feels quite different from flyer wheel
spinning because more of your body is involved. The spinner
stands during the process, continuously walking away from the
spindle to draft and then toward the spindle to wind on in a
kind of rhythmic dance. For spinners who have gotten proficient
at the flyer wheel, spinning on a great wheel offers new challenges
and insights and the excitement of something new to explore.
Information on using and caring for
great wheels is thin on the ground, so this column is going
to cover the sources I’ve
been able to dig up. I certainly don’t consider myself
an expert on great wheels, so if you know of any other books,
articles, videos, or websites that deal with great wheels,
feel free to drop me a line.
As always, Spin-Offis a treasure trove. Unfortunately,
these older issues are currently out of print, but Interweave
Press seems to be reissuing some old articles digitally, so
perhaps they will consider putting together an ebook of these
great wheel articles if we all email them and show our enthusiasm?
The Spring 1993 issue of Spin-Off features
three articles on great wheels by Mary Spanos, Anne Landin,
and Ella Baker. Mary Spanos’s piece, “Gartha and
Olber Ray,” is
a sweet tribute to the Rays, who began researching the craft
in the early sixties when spinners were rare.
It’s humbling for today’s spinners to remember a
time when anyone who wanted to learn to spin had to begin
with museum research because there simply were no books,
magazines, or videos to be had. In “My Great Wheel and
Me,” Ella
Baker chronicles her experiences with learning to spin, emphasizing
fiber prep as the single most important element in smooth
one-handed spinning. Anne Landin’s “Spinning on
a Great Wheel” is
practical and very detailed, focusing on finding a working
great wheel and specific techniques for the one-handed long
draw, winding and unwinding, and plying.
Another extremely useful Spin-Off article
is “The
Thrift-shop Great Wheels” by Kathleen Wenzel and Donna
Junkins (Summer, 1991). Kathleen and Donna were too broke to
buy working great wheels so they hatched a plan to acquire parts
and construct their own. This fabulous article actually gives
instructions for how to make a great wheel from a variety of
scavenged makeshift parts (one of them begins with an antique
wagon wheel), and while you need to know which end of a saw
to use, it’s not so complicated that only an advanced
furniture-maker can do it.
The only other great-wheel related Spin-Off article
listed in Interweave’s comprehensive index is one from
Winter 1984: “A Practical Approach to the Great Wheel.” I
have not been able to get a hold of a copy, so I don’t
know who it’s by or what it covers. If anybody out there
has a copy, do let me know the author and topic and I’ll
update this.
The only how-to book I’m aware of that
focuses exclusively on the great wheel is Katy Turner’s The
Legacy of the Great Wheel: Myths, History and Traditions
with Practical Lessons (Mountain View, MO: Select Books,
1980). Much of the book is actually a primer for beginning
spinners, covering a bit of spinning history, selection of
a fleece, washing, carding, yarn finishing, and offering
a very brief introduction to nonwool fibers (flax, silk,
and cotton). These topics are now covered in more detail in
the many spinning books currently available (although at the
time I’m sure
it was helpful). There’s
a lot that modern spinners would quibble with, but the meat
of the book is the small section that deals with using the
great wheel itself—the anatomy of great wheel heads, how
to perfect your left-handed long draw, the correct angle
of the spindle and drive wheel in relation to the rest of
the wheel (she says you want the drive wheel to have a slight
lean to the right and the spindle should not be perpendicular
to the bench but angled very slightly away from the spinner).
She also includes instructions for plying on the great wheel,
which is not particularly efficient but can be done. Photographs
are black and white but clear enough to do the job. It’s
available used, but the price is often way too high in my
opinion. Stalk it and don’t bite until you can find a
copy at a reasonable price. And be aware: the acknowledgements
page notes that parts of the book appeared in Spin-Off in
1979 (volume III), so if you get a hold of that issue, you
probably won’t
need the book.
Anything that helps you develop your
proficiency with the one-handed long draw will help you learn
to spin more effectively on the great wheel. You can find
more long draw resources here.
Two books by the venerable Paula Simmons are readily available
and very relevant to great wheel spinning are Spinning for Softness
and Speedand Spinning
and Weaving with Wool. The
former focuses on the one-handed long draw, and the latter actually
has a chapter that covers great wheel techniques. Spinning
for Softness and Speed was recently reissued and is in
print; Spinning and Weaving with Wool is out of print
but often reasonably priced used.
Because the charka, another driven spindle
wheel, also requires you to learn to spin one handed, Stephenie
Gaustad’s video Spinning
Cotton(Loveland, CO: Interweave Press, 2011)is highly
useful. The video includes an excellent chapter on spinning
cotton on the great wheel, and Stephenie makes the point
that the great wheel was Europe’s version of the charka. Abby
Franquemont’s video Drafting: The Long and Short of
It (Loveland, CO: Interweave Press) is also definitely
worth viewing, and though she teaches the long draw on a flyer-and-bobbin
wheel, the technique is the same.
Allen Fannin’s massive Handspinning: Art and Technique (New
York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1970; now out of print but available
used) includes a short section about the “high” wheel,
including a rather academic explanation of the long draw.
Visual learners will find it tough going, with only a few black-and-white
photos taken from a distance. But Fannin covers the building
of the cop (the yarn wound onto the spindle) in detail with
good clear photos, which is helpful.
If you have found an antique great wheel
and are wondering about whether you can fix it up, you
might check out Pat Bownas’s “Quick
Fixes for Antique Wheels,” which appeared in the Fall
2011 issue of Spin-Off. While not dedicated to great
wheels specifically, Pat’s article has lots of useful
tips for fixing up an antique wheel and at the end of the article
Florence Feldman-Wood offers a list of spinning wheel restorers,
very useful info for someone with a great wheel in need of repair.
Pat’s article also tells you how to create new front and
rear spindle bearings from braided cornhusks, which were traditionally
used on great wheels. Karen Pauli’s The Care and Feeding
of Spinning Wheels (Loveland, CO: Interweave Press, 1981;
out of print but available used) contains quite a bit of general
information on repairs that owners of antique great wheels may
find helpful, although only a few pages specifically cover great
wheels (and focus on anatomy: identifying parts so you can figure
out what might be broken).
As much as I am smitten with my antique great
wheel, I still dream of one day owning a beautifully made
new one. Alden
Amos is the only one I know of who is actively making great
wheels, and he’s the only one I’ve found online.
None of the most popular commercial spinning wheel manufacturers
offer a model. Perhaps your best bet would be to contact
someone who makes custom wheels and see if he or she would
make one to order. You might also contact your local spinning guild
for ideas or ask wheel makers who bring their wares to fiber
festivals. (If you are a great wheel maker, please email
me so I can add your name.)
Those interested in the many variations
in great wheel construction or in great wheels as antiques
might like browsing through these illustrated guides. Joan
Whittaker Cummer’s A
Book of Spinning Wheels (Portsmouth, NH: Peter E.
Randall Publisher, 1993) contains black-and-white photos
and detailed descriptions and measurements of more than
a dozen great wheels, most from the nineteenth century
and primarily American made. A
Pictorial Guide to American Spinning Wheels by D. Pennington
and M. Taylor (Sabbathday Lake, ME: The Shaker Press, 1975)
devotes a whole chapter to great wheels and a second chapter
to Shaker wheels, many of which are great wheels. Both books
are now out of print, but you might be able to find a copy
in the library of your local spinning guild if you can’t
get one from interlibrary loan. David Pennington and Michael
Taylor also have a new book, just published in 2007, called Spinning
Wheels and Accessories(Schiffer
Press). It’s pricey, so I was only able to peruse a copy
at a museum bookshop, but it has many color photos. Patricia
Baines’s Spinning
Wheels, Spinners, and Spinning (London:
B.T. Batsford, 1977; Reprint, 1991) spends only a few pages
on great wheels (in the context of the wheel developing from
spindle wheels to flyer-and-bobbin wheels) and has only a
few photos of them (although there is a very cool old photo
of a great wheel mounted right to the wall of a Faeroe Island
farmhouse that seems like a space-saving idea whose time
should come again). A more readily available resource for
antique wheel fans is Florence Feldman-Wood’s newletter, The
Spinning Wheel Sleuth. You can subscribe or buy back issues
on her website.
She
includes detailed topics for back issues, so you can find
all those that feature great wheels. Florence can also be
seen traveling with some of her amazing wheel collection,
at various fiber events.
Remember the funky and charming old Foxfire series,
the oral histories gathered by Georgia school kids and edited
by their teacher Eliot Wigginton back in the seventies? Foxfire
2 is the one with the spinning and weaving coverage, and
though it certainly won’t teach a beginner how to spin,
the photos of stalwart ladies with their great wheels are
lovely to peruse over a cup of tea. These books are back in
print.
What we really need is a dandy new video
workshop from a seasoned great wheel spinner—or better yet, from a few—to
teach and inspire and preserve this art for another generation
(hint, hint to Interweave Press or other video producers!).
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lee Juvan learned to spin on a walking wheel
when she was twelve in a summer workshop at
Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts. She
bought her own wheel in 1990, and she’s
been at it since then. Lee is the designer
of several patterns published in Knitty, including Shroom and Shelburne.
