This blog has now moved to "Cady May's Corner"
http://cadymayscorner.blogspot.com
where I post a bit about spinning, spindolyns and sheep and farm stuff.

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Weebles, a spindle makers tale of woe and wobble

So i have been gluing spindolyns this morning, inspecting, and tossing rejects into the reject box and thinking about wobble and weebles.
Not the wobble from smelling glue, nor the wobble from the earth being out of balance both weatherwise and spiritually (from too many people straying too far off the beauty path)
Nay, I have been thinking about the physics of wobble, acceptable amounts of wobble and design issues.
Years back on some yahoo group about spindle making (forgive my forgetfullness) there was a great discussion on the physics of wobble, faster spin, center of gravity, etc. I learned and applied alot of the information when working on spindle designs between the pleasant spindle and the spindolyn.

But, the spindolyn is a different animal, it rides in a tube, and the tube has space between it and the shaft and it will ride about in that space a little bit. Not a great wobble, more like a slight gyration.

Not enough to slow down spin, nor to interfere with the aesthetic experience of spinning on the spindolyn but enough to cause a wrinkle in the forhead of some spinners who do not understand the physics of the supported spin and only have one criteria with which to judge spinablity, that of movement away from the center. There are, of course, other criteria, such as speed, comfort, and "handiness".

The matter is complicated for the maker by the following circumstances.
If the whorl is not flat, or centered, or it has warped from the finish (which some do, because of the lay of the grain within the whorl, you oil that puppy and it curls up like a tater chip) or the ring is warped or has warped from the finish, or was out of round to start with..these things cause real wobble, and even though you inspect and reinspect at each step of their creation...you can end up with a weeble.
The weebles go in a big box. What do I do with the weebles?

1 comment:

murdo said...

Sell wobble-whorls as paperweights?