Dancing Geckos

I got up this morning and began to clean my workspace in readiness for the new year. Sorting through some pieces of wood to see what I could throw away, I saw something. I couldn't help myself and began to play.
All of the parts of this project came from the recent projects I've posted, with the exception of the bolt for the axle and the ear of corn. It began as a charkha but when the hole I drilled for the knitting needle spindle wasn't straight I looked around and realized that the remains of the rolling pin would be an even better spindle and that it would also work as a bobbin winder.
I decided to use some old Appalachian great wheel techniques for my construction, because they are not only low-tech and ingenious, but they work really well. The wheel post is a chair rung with a hole drilled for the axle at about the right height. I did a lot of guessing and just going for it on this project. I constructed the wheel by cutting three circles of masonite at slightly different diameters. I marked the center holes and drilled them with a Forstner bit, then glued and sandwiched them together with the smallest diameter wheel in the center. This created the pulley for the drive belt. I placed the nylon bearings from the rolling pin in the center hole and the wheel was ready to decorate.
The "mother of all" was the decorative piece cut from the chair back. I really wanted to use this piece for its looks, but a plain flat piece would have been more practical. It did however, have predrilled holes in the right positions to hold the spindle maidens and a short piece of spindle to make a peg to hold the tension device. I attached it to the base using a scrap of leather for a hinge. I screwed two small scraps of masonite over the leather to hold it in position better. Because the mother-of-all isn't flat, I added two wedges as additional tensioning devices. I drilled holes through them and tied them to the base to keep them from getting lost. Either one of these tensioning methods would have worked alone with a flat piece for the mother-of-all, but I needed both because my curved piece didn't sit flush on the base. I drilled a hole in the end of the board for a section of spindle to be used as the tensioning peg. This is friction fit and turns in the hole to tighten the cord (think Ashford spinning wheel).
The rolling pin parts were my best discovery on this project. The handles fit tightly over the heavy metal shaft, so I cut one off and pounded it further onto the shaft to serve as my pulley. I cut a small groove to hold the drive cord in place. The second rolling pin handle is lag screwed to the drive wheel for the handle. The part that took the longest on this project was using a whetstone to grind the end of the shaft to a point. This still needs more work before spinning with it.
I could have used two small pieces of leather for the bearings to hold the spindle shaft in place, but I wanted to show you an old method. I soaked some cornhusks, tore them into 1" wide strips and braided them. (Then I started getting hungry for tamales.) I left the strong string that I tied the ends with long to help me thread the end of the braid back though the hole in the maiden. I then whittled two tiny wedges from an oak split to wedge the husk braid into place. Leather was just as available to early Appalachians as cornhusks and worked well, but the cornhusks are supposed to have some magical powers and I need all the magic I can get.
I used whatever cord I could find for a drive belt and just tied it with a knot because I intend to replace it with some better cord I have whenever I come across it. I rosined it with fiddle bow rosin to make it grip better in the drive pulley. (Remember this one when you have rope or cord that you don't want to slip - friction brake?)
I used a cornhusk on the drive shaft to keep the bobbin tightly in place while I wound it.
A section of corncob protects the point of the spindle when not in use.
I added the short section of board to the base where the wheel post is for two reasons. It adds extra support to the post, and it hides the hole that I drilled wrong. After I get my workspace cleaned up, I'll touch up the paint in a couple of places and try it out for spinning.

Update 1/2/2011: I've now completed the charkha and it is spinning beautifully. I did what I should have done in the first place and mounted the curved mother-of-all to a short section of board (also from the chair). Because I didn't have heavy enough leather on hand to make a good leather hinge, I found the large t-hinge in my stash. It's large and might seem like overkill, but I only had one and it was just waiting for a use. After remounting the mother-of-all with the hinge, I added a flange cut from masonite to the spindle and painted it. The flange is glued in place with a 2 part epoxy glue. I drilled the hole for the post completly through the base so it now fits better without any wobble. I painted the back of the wheel and then made a better drive belt.
After doing all of this and having the wheel nearly complete I discovered a great plan for a wheel online, and could have saved myself from reinventing the wheel if I had seen it sooner. However it did have an important bit of information that I needed. I still had to grind the tip of the spindle to a better point, so I took the spindle off the wheel again and put it in the chuck of my drill. I got out my knee vise and used it to hold the whetstone while I turned the spindle against it - USE SAFETY GOGGLES for this! This would have been easier if I had done it before adding the flange, but it worked out okay. I put the spindle back on the wheel and it was ready for spinning. It works really well if I clamp it to the table.

If I had seen the spinning wheel plan before I added the hinge, I could have used a different tensioning device if I wanted to, but the wedges work well now that the mother-of-all doesn't wobble around. If anyone is thinking of making a wheel I highly recommend that they look at the plan at Interweave's Free Download page here: http://www.spinningdaily.com/media/p/138...