double drive flax wheel

[aostling]

This is a spinning wheel I saw demonstrated at the Wellbrook beetling mill in Northern Ireland (see an earlier post for photos of the mill in operation). It is a clever machine, made of wood. From a Wikipedia entry ...

The flax wheel is a good example of a double drive wheel. The double drive wheel is named after its drive band, which goes around the spinning wheel twice. The drive band turns the flyer, which is the horse-shoe shaped piece of wood surrounding the bobbin, as well as the bobbin. The bobbin has a smaller radius than the flyer, thus the drive band tries to turn it faster. When the yarn is being wound on the bobbin, the bobbin goes faster and winds yarn on.

The woman here is feeding the combed flax, attaching one skein to another with a touch of wax from the pot. The turning yoke (or flyer) twists the yarn, and it is wound onto the bobbin which turns at a differentially faster rate.

Who knew? Now, if I could only understand how a sewing machine works.

[kendall]

Odd, I've seen a hundred spinning wheels, but never 'looked' at the actual operation

It's pretty interesting even for a simple mechanism.

Ken.