Spinning Wheel Parts and How were they made

[RHayes]

I know at least a couple out there are familiar with spinning wheels for spinning yarn.  There isn't much iron on the antiques but the little there is was often forged.  I make items for the fiber people and more than occasionally do repairs.  The old flyer axles (or mandrels) consist of a shaft and an orifice.  The orifice is often wore out, rusted, jagged and paper thin and I often repair the orifice so the remaining shaft can fit back in the original wood.  

My question is how were the originals forged.  Here are a few:

These are hard to chuck in a lathe so I made a holder with 2 spiders so I can dial them into center, cut off the old tube, create a shoulder in the area of the collar, then turn and press on a new orifice that I braze.

 

Here is a fixed antique .  The forged taper fits right back in the  original wood.

 

I ponder how the originals were made.  My guess is the smith started with a round shaft,   upset the end and hammered out the tapered square section,  punched and drift the eye,  then add the tube and collar.   There is usually some left hand threading about an inch in from the end that may have been single pointed on a treadle lathe? but not sure. The left hand thread keeps the drive pulley from loosening(matching square nut inlayed in wood pulley)  The flyers typically ride in oiled leather bearings. One at the orifice end, and one at the far end.  The orifice on shafts that are in good condition usually look machined either before (if added separately) or after forging.

I would like to make some of these like the originals.  I don't think my hammering skills are up to it yet so I'm reaching out for opinions on a method and logical order of making this item.  Any thoughts or comments would be greatly appreciated.  

 

 

[Frosty]

Seeing as lathes are one of the oldest mechnisms in the human took kit I don't see a problem machining them.

However if you want to forge them, I'd make a closed die like a bolt header; closed die so the bearing section is properly centered. Then punch the orifice and clean up in the die set. Lastly forge the point, polish and finish. Lanolin yes?

Tell the ladies to be more gentle with the orifice hooks.  Of course there isn't a rule saying you can't make them from oh say 1045 and harden them, they'll last longer. Case hardening for abrasion resistence would be "traditional" for the last couple milennia or you could go all late 19th century and chrome them.

I'm sure glad none of the spinners around here think I can do that!

Frosty The Lucky.

 

[RHayes]

I suspected some sort of die was used in some I have seen.  The first four are fairly primitive.  Chrome plated.....what an idea!!

[Charles R. Stevens]

Metal lathes for most of the last two centuries look a lot like modern wood lathes, including free handed tooling. I would not be surprised if they didn’t forge a blank and finish it on a simple lathe.

i have had an opertunity to repair a cuple linen wheals. Including forging new brass bushings, replacing the leather bushings and replacing the little hooks interesting to see one up and running producing thread out of fleece 

 

[RHayes]

I had a Barnes #6 lathe for a bit.  The treadle mechanism was long gone and the 3rd generation farmer converted it to electric.  Had it been original I probably would still have it and think it would be very suited to work like this.  

There are spinning wheel groups in just about every town and they all need something repaired eventually.  Sounds like Frosty wants to get in on some of it

[Frosty]

14 hours ago, RHayes said:

Sounds like Frosty wants to get in on some of it

Not me! I don't know of any spindle wheels that aren't more curiosity or educational wheels. Everybody I know of uses spools on the flier. Parts are easily available for a LOT less than I charge for shop rate. YES my shop rate goes up for jobs I don't want! Don't be silly. 

Lathes ARE ancient, there is argument about whether they predate walking beam pumps and hammers but it's close. A spring pole lathe can be made with a: couple points, say sharpened nails, a tree crotch, a springy branch and some cordage. The super finely made chalices, goblets, "or whatever you call the vessels" in TutAnkhamen's tomb were spun. 

The same sort of lathe that spun goblets will cut the dies, just different blades for steel than wood, brass, bronze, etc. Do that on the spring pole sharpening wheel or hand stone.

The term lathe is derived from a flat wood spring that powers the spring pole tools. The name of the wooden spring? Lathe. Another common use before sheet rock backs the plaster in "lathe and plaster" wall sheathing.

Humans have been twisting cordage and weaving cloth for a long LONG time. Paleo archeologists were surprised when they discovered Otzi the ice man was wearing woven clothing. I thought that was a silly thing to be surprised at, Otzi dates from about the time (Great pyramid) Kufu's Father was building pyramids in Egypt and they were wearing cotton and flax kilts / robes.

I think it's interesting that spring pole tools lasted as long as they did, spinning wheels are the earliest examples (that I know of) of cranks and pitman arms converting linear motion to rotary.

Frosty The Lucky.

[ThomasPowers]

Drilling goes back as far as the metal lathe; though the drills and drill bits look different. (and of course all the pre 1850's will be real wrought iron...)

[smokerx]

Something isn't right here. Please see "black smith how to make a hollow hole punch". In economy of motion, You can just hammer out the hips in the forge then bore the shaft, for the spinning wheel orifice, and when the drill bit pops through to the hips, the second hole is produced. But that's not what's going on here. This is all cottage industry, so we're probably looking at 4 separate examples where no one figured out you can do this. Or, boring with a lathe isn't how its done.

The one example available of a guy building a spinning wheel that details the building of the flyer shaft and orifice assembly. He takes it to a guy with a stick welder, presumably to weld the spindle portion to the orifice. Its hard to tell because the footage is grainy. But in the flyer the orifice does not need to be connected to the spindle shaft. The can be separate pieces, but this makes it harder as you have to center everything up with those as separate components. But it shows there's difficulty sorting this out, if people where willing to go to the lengths of not joining them and instead fighting tolerances to a possible wobbly flyer. If modern cottage is saying theyre 2 pieces by stick welding them, examples of not joining them are suggesting theyre 2 pieces, Not using economy of motion to create 2 holes for the price of one in these examples are saying theyre 2 pieces. My gut is telling me theyre 2 pieces. The orifice portions is looking alot like a black smith nail header that fits into a hardy hole for forging heads on railroad spikes. This makes the orifice portion with no lathe. the second hole in the shaft looks obviously forge punched.

But then how to join them? Braze or bronze welded or forge welding? Perhaps I'm wrong and its a single piece thats orifice is forged like a blacksmith nail header thru a hardy hole then punch the second hole.

Im not buying the lathe hypothesis. If you had a lathe, you'd be making brass cannons. These are cottage industry junk items that might fetch $5. Like you could knock them out quickly with low quality tooling.

[smokerx]

Alright:What if its one piece? What if the little divot, the small concave that looks like a spoon occurring adjacent to the eye, Is a tool mark from hammering the flat (or square). Punching the eye hole Then shoving the end into a mold, like a hardy hole, and driving a punch from the eyelet hole down, Simultaneously forming the bore for the orifice and collar (against the face of the hardy hole mold), while leaving that beauty mark. Similar to how I suspect a nail header or bolt header for a hardy hole would be made, except with the shaft in your way as a handle. Someone in Latvia is or was hammering it to a sheet then forming it around bar stock and forge welding  for the orifice. Leaving the tell tales of a forged weld seem and only 1 arm connecting the shaft to the orifice. The stick welding of 2 units kind of broke down when I rewatched it and it's a piece of pipe and metal rod connected by a washer. The above possibilty, I think, would be quick and dirty and knock them out, with low tooling for a blacksmith Then only using a pole lathe or treadle lathe to taper the other end of the shaft. Then thread with a screw box. I think this would work to get an exact replica and conform to economy of motion and financial economy of this thing probably costing you a few bucks and being made by the same guy bashing heads on nails and precision steel lathing not conforming with the time frame of the invention.

Edited January 1, 2022 by Mod30
Remove self quote in post.

[ThomasPowers]

Wow making a brass cannon on a tiny lathe is impressive!

[TWISTEDWILLOW]

Hello and welcome to the forum smokerx! 

you might wanna look over the (read this first) thread, and update your profile, 

you sure seem to be pretty passionate about how these spinning wheel mandrels we’re made! 

care to share the link to the person in Latvia making them? 

I’m not sure which was invented first the lathe or the spinning wheel? 

but i don’t see why a blacksmith couldn’t have had or used a lathe as well as his forge and anvil to make the mandrels?

Since a blacksmith is in the business of working with metal and in some cases wood, I would think Even a crude lathe would have came in handy in any smithy through out history, but that’s my two cents, 

 

[George N. M.]

Lathes in one form or another have been around since antiquity.  Spinning wheels date to the late middle ages.  Before that everything was spun on a drop spindle.

I suspect that the construction of the spindle axle involved a lot of file work.  A smith could drill or punch a hole in a larger piece of iron and then remove anything that didn't look like a spindle.

A lathe could be used for truing up the spindle as the last step in the process.  Also, it is possible that a spinning wheel maker would purchase commercially made spindles rather than making them himself or having the local blacksmith make them.  This was done with various accelerator heads, e.g. a minor's head.

Finally, there may have not been any one single way of making spindles.  Different smiths or spindle maker may have each had their own way of doing it.  If I were building a spinning wheel from scratch, using the tools available to me, I would drill a blind hole into the end of a about 3/8" rod, maybe forge out a point on the other end, and then finish it with the file, including cutting into the bottom of the blind hole to finish the orifice.  I might chuck it into a drill press or a drill and use a file while it was turning at a low speed to true it up.

Because it is sometimes difficult to date old wheels it might be interesting to see whether the spindle was wrought iron or mild steel.

"By hammer and hand all arts do stand." 

[ThomasPowers]

Note that early spinning wheels did not use orifices, they used pointed solid spindles like you can still see on Walking Wheels.  Linen is abrasive and so using it on a spindle will tend to sharpen the end---which is why Sleeping Beauty could prick her finger on the spindle----hard to do that with an orifice!

[smokerx]

Hi, Thomas. The Great wheel uses the needled design with no orifice. The Castle wheel uses the orificed mandrel design. These wheels where being used along side one another since the medieval times. According to my research, The Castle wheel design dates back to medieval times.

Like the nut and bolt. From wooden tap to die to metal tap to die and nut and bolt. There are ways of softer metals and tool steel to cut that second orifice on a lathe(such as carburizing), otherwise the modern metal nut and bolt would never have sprung up as something that is now ubiquitous. Like Japanese concepts of black smithing or even damascus, since both are forge welding a tool steel onto a softer steel with more tensile strength. But a lathe is wood working in that time frame. I dont see the tolerance of a ram in a lathe being there. I think what is happening is attempts to explain away something that the original medieval blacksmith found simple with some sort of trick. The big trick to a blacksmith is hot and cold.   The only way to prove either side is looking into the mandrel orifice for marks that suggest the tool marks. But, in my view, The only point there is to disprove the lathe theory. But the thread on the end of the spindle to attach the whirl suggests they had leveled their skillset to metal on metal threading dies.

Hello, TwistedWillow, I am most passionate about this because from mandrel to wheel.I feel something was lost here and I feel that knowledge may have been lost in world wars as cottage industries that originally developed in ancient guilds as wood working guilds would have had to work closely with blacksmithing guilds and here, it intersects with textile production. With a drill press and/or a stick welder or machinist lathe, I think you could knock something out similar enough all day. I just dont think its accurate to its development.

[ThomasPowers]

Castle wheels started with just the "needle"; the orifice and flyer came in later on them.  It's interesting to note how the number of spinners/spinsters per 1 weaver went down over time as technological advances in spinning occurred.

My wife has been teaching spinning for over 50 years now and we have a metric ton of books on the craft and it's history.

[anvil]

This is not a difficult project for a blacksmith. The most likely way would be to make them from two pieces. This minimizes both upsetting and drawing out. The third one down shows this without a doubt. You can see the cold shut from the weld. The other three show possible signs of a forge weld. The parent stock for the left hand piece would be the same diameter as the round boss. From the boss to the end, going to the left, would be made like a tenon. The tenon tools of today are no different than what was available back then. Its a quick forging and a monkey tool sets the right angle transition between the smaller round tenon and the round parent stock. I can think of at least three different ways to easily forge the flat to the right of the boss. The hole we see is most likely punched, then the frogs eye would be hot filed off. I say this because the sides of the hole are less than half the thickness of the material its punched thru. A sure sign of a punched hole. I would punch to the final size, not punch and drift, but either way would work. Lol, we ain't making piano's here. Then forge weld the smaller round stock to the flat stock. Next comes the cold work. The hole in the left hand tenon would be drilled. Check out "The Gunsmith of Williamsburg" vid to see examples of this. Finally the threads, left or right handed would not matter, the process is the same, and would be done with a simple screw plate made by the smith. The vid I mentioned shows this as well. I can't imagine the whole process would take an hour.

[ThomasPowers]

Moxon's "Mechanick Exercises" published in 1703  mentions that a screw plate is a must have tool for every blacksmith shop.

[anvil]

Heres the addy for The Gunsmith of Williamsburg. A great vid to watch.

 

FWIW, the machined piece you show above is very similar to the way I forge the working parts for lever handles for mortise units and deadbolts.