The main drive wheel is a 12 inch circle cut from 3mm thick birch ply wood. I used a coping saw and did this at my desk. If one had a scroll saw and a work bench it would be much easier.

The spindle is a smallish knitting needle, probably  a US2 I think, but I don’t remember. The “whorl”, whose only purpose is to keep the cop away from the maidens is a 1″ disc cut from a lasagna noodle box. The maidens themselves are 6″ lengths of 3/8 inch dowels with small eye hooks screwed in about an inch from the top. The drive band would slip if it ran directly over the needle so I fed on to the needle a piece of 1/4″ dowel. I just drilled a centered hole the same diameter as the needle. To put a groove for the drive band into this drive pulley, I mounted the needle (with the dowel on it) into a drill. I ran the drill while holding the edge of a file against the center of the dowel. It’s a poor man’s lathe, probably not the safest thing to do, but I was careful. You can see the groove in the dowel more clearly here:

The drive band itself is a piece of gimp, a.k.a. craft lace, a.k.a. Rexlace–that stuff that you make boondoggle keychains out of at summer camp. I recommend using either “Nite Glow” or one of the glitter colors because they have a grippier texture. I went with the “Nite Glow” because how could I not? It glows in the dark! How many spinning wheels in the world have glow in the dark drive bands?

Now back to those 12″ plywood circles. I noticed in several photos and music videos(?) that many traditional charkhas have zig zag or criss cross lacing between two discs like this (15 seconds into the video):

Notice btw that she does not have a glow in the dark drive band, but that paint job and mirror bedazzling treatment is pretty sweet. I might have to pimp my ride that way, too… Anyway, to lace up the drive wheel I used a compass and some geometry-class-style fun to lay out 24 equally spaced holes 1/8″ in from the rim of the 12″ discs. I drilled the holes simultaneously through both discs, stacked with their centers aligned. Then I separated the discs using a 1″ wooden spool. The spool sits centered in the wheel. I drilled a 1/4″ hole through the two discs and spool then hammered some 1/4″ copper pipe into the hole. The axel itself is some 3/16″ cold rolled steel rod:

This metal-on-metal arrangement makes for fairly low friction and fairly low noise when spinning the wheel. The axel itself does not turn. I used a needle and some lace weight cotton to lace up the wheel:

It took some experimentation to figure out how to do the lacing. In this scheme, the lacing never goes over the edges of the wheels, but if I did it again, I’d probably just do it the simpler way that shoes are usually laced up. Here’s the spindle in action working on some cotton punis that I carded from cotton balls.

The drive ratio is about 48:1.

As a starting point for my design I read this post by Layne Brosius, a.k.a. AFrayedKnotter. My kick spindle is pretty similar to hers. There are two major differences. The first is that I used a 1″ thick piece of poplar with feet, as you can see in the pictures. The weight of the flywheel (a furniture bun foot from Lowe’s) seems to give the device sufficient inertia both to spin for a while and to not slide across the floor during use.  I’ve only used the kick spindle on carpeting and outdoor cement, but I think if I put some rubber feet on the bottom it would stay in place on wood or tile, too.

The second significant change I made is in the bearing design. Most kick spindles I’ve seen use roller bearings, like you’d find in a roller skate. That would make the spindle turn longer between kicks, but nice bearings are expensive (especially if I’m looking to build ten of these in a class), and I don’t really mind kicking in a rhythm, since I’m used to treadling on a wheel anyway. Instead of a $4 skate bearing, I came up with something that costs a dime, namely an actual dime:

I drilled into the base at a 45° angle with a ¾” spade bit then super glued a dime onto the floor of the angled hole. I put a divot in the dime with a 1/16″ metal bit.

In the divot rests the sharpened metal point of the spindle. To point the spindle end, I nailed a small finishing nail into the center of the 1/2″ dowel that I used for the spindle (I used 1/2″ dowel because I have a 1/2″ in drill bit but not a 3/8″ one. If I had the 3/8″ bit, I’d probably go with the 3/8″ dowel).  Next I sharpened the end of the spindle by cutting away excess wood with a knife. This leaves the small nail head sticking out the end like a pencil lead. I sharpened the head with a file:

The photo doesn’t really do justice to the sharpness of the tip. (but yes, that is a dvd of Flash Dance behind my hand. I’m a spinning maniac, maniac, and I’m spinning like I’ve never done before…) The spindle will go through twelve to twenty rotations per kick:

I spun a few ounces of wool from rolags in a hotel room while watching Elf over thanksgiving weekend.  The kick spindle works pretty well.It fits in car much more easily than a spinning wheel–with a convertible car seat in the back of my Corolla, there’s no way my Saxony wheel would fit anywhere in the car anymore. It’s fairly lightweight, but heavy enough to stay in place. It isn’t as portable as a drop spindle, but the winding on procedure is a bit more efficient. Also I’m still not very good at long draws on a drop spindle, but it’s easy to spin short or long draw on the kick spindle. The kick spindle can  accommodate a very large cop of yarn, So I can spin more yarn before winding balls for plying. Winding directly off the kick spindle is also very easy.  Total cost for the whole thing was about $12. If you wanted something a bit more aesthetic, you could use a plaque with a routed edge for the base and stain the whole thing.

Happy Halloween to all! I’m pretty pleased with how Owen’s first Halloween costume turned out. Beth knit the vest and pants, and I did the hat. I think it looks especially hilarious when we put the hat on backwards so it looks like we’re carrying a little sock monkey around:

It was really  fun to take Owen to a high school Halloween dance where we could bounce him in his costume to the tunes of “The tale of Captain Jack Sparrow” and” Party Rock Anthem“, among others. I realized during that one that I can’t shuffle or running man while holding a baby…

I hadn’t improvised a pattern in a while–it was fun. It’s a combination of knit and crochet, mostly knit. Here’s the “pattern.” I took gauge on some knit picks interchangeable tip 8′s because they were handy, then measured the circumference of Owen’s head and multiplied my my stitches per inch then rounded down to a multiple of four for my k2p2 ribbing. I think I ended up casting on 72 stitches. After about 3.5cm  of ribbing I switched to stockinette for another 5 cm, then decreased every 8th stitch, then a row of knitting, decreased every 7th stitch then a row of knitting, every decreased every sixth stitch,  etc down to where I was decreasing every 4th stitch, and at that point I left out the non-decreasing rows and just decreased til I had four stitches, which I pulled the tail through.

For the monkey nose, I knit a sock toe, beginning with a figure 8 cast on of 10 stitches per needle on a 40″ circ. For this toe method see, for example, Silver’s Sock Class. I don’t know what it’s called when you crochet a piece of knitting onto other knitting, nor can I really describe how I did it. Basically I held the sock toe against the hat, and crocheted around the toe, treating the hat as if it were the previous row of crochet.  The ear’s are crochet’s semi-circles, which I crocheted on the same way I attached the nose. The black mouth line and two nostrils were added with duplicate stitch.

I think a whole family’s worth of sock monkey hats may be in order.

Owen rolled over for the first time tonight! He repeated the feat three times, but wouldn’t do it for the camera.

No kitties were harmed during the production of this video. The trebuchet requires a bit more tuning. I need to lengthen the sling and adjust the ratio of projectile mass to counterweight mass. The projectile is a wadded up ball of aluminum foil, whose mass is less than one gram. The counterweight basket is holding 77 grams of quarters, ball bearings and other tchotchke. I’ll post more on this including some slow motion footage once the siege engine is better adjusted. I’m guessing a 20-30 foot range will be possible with this machine.

This project is a warm up in preparation for building something a bit (or more than a bit) larger at school. Look out pumpkins…

I often take many photos in rapid succession. When reviewing them later, I have this habit of repeatedly toggling two or three photos back and forth if the result looks funny. Sometimes I do it until my eyes tear up. Here is an example set to music. Hopefully Owen will forgive me…some day.

Owen is a month and two days old today!
To those of you I only communicate with via blogging, sorry I’ve been away for a while! It’s been pretty hectic being a new dad and a new high school physics teacher, so I haven’t had much time for blog posting, but I love being a new dad and being a high school physics teacher. Life is good.

The first two shots are about a minute apart.  They’re 60 second exposures (it takes another 60 seconds to empty the buffer onto the card). If you download them and toggle back and forth you can get an idea of the movement of the auroral structures over time. You can also see the big dipper moving.