January 17, 2009
Old, made new.
I feel extremely grateful to have been given a spinning wheel:
An Ashford Traditional, probably the 1975 version.
The wheel had some issues, as it had been stored inproperly and dried out some. At first I thought it was something David and I might be able to fix, that perhaps it just needed to be forced back into shape.
Then I started looking for someone with a bit more knowledge.
I found a man, here in town, that agreed to look at the wheel. We went out to his place and I was wowed. He had a two story home and the first floor was a machinist type studio. Two double glass french doors opened into a room with a winch, generators, power tools galore. He restore fire engines for cripes sake!
He is a super sweet man too. He took the wheel apart at the seams, sanded the edges down, put biscuits in and glued the wheel back together. It was square in shape at that point, so he rounded it out. He needed to take 3/8th off the area with the seams just to make it round again. He fixed up the footman, and recreated the flyer to have three speeds. He oiled her too and charged 72$
I think I will spin and knit him a hat.
Posted by Melly at January 17, 2009 4:24 PM