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Wednesday, November 24, 2004

Bounce
Yay! The Woolee Winder is here! But it came to me, and I thought mean thoughts about the woman at the post office, so you know what Karma is doing, right?
Static

Yup, kicking my butt with technical difficulties.... It took forever to get the yarn threaded, because the WW orifice is smaller, and angled differently than the Lendrum one - the hook doesn't actually fit anymore. Once I managed to fiddle with that, I kept having a lot of trouble with tension, and starting breaking yarn a lot last night, and not being able to spin very evenly because the draw was funky. Playing with the drive band a bit helped that (you were right, Carolyn, I'd just already tried that before I saw your response!)

Even when I could get the tension right, the orifice hook kept scraping against the bobbin and flyer as it circled. I kept trying to explain this on Knitters Review, then realized that this is actually 2004, and I have a blog. So, without further ado, pictures...

Here's Fiona's natural orifice - big and flat and plenty of room for the hook. (sorry for the tiny editing stuff - I swear, it looked HUGE on the screen when I did it - if you click on the picture it should go slightly larger for you...)


Here's the WW orifice. I've circled in pink the very tip of the orifice hook, in as far as it will go. The end of the hook does peak out of the orifice, but where it hooks back in, where I'd need to put the yarn for it to catch, is still tucked inside the orifice. It requires extreme contortions to get the yarn down into the hole and looped properly around the hook. Trust me when I tell you, you do not want to split the yarn when you hook it, or freaky things happen. I'm thinking of hiring a cricket to lasso the hook or something. It seems easier to train a cricket to do that, than do the contortions I was doing last night.


Here's where the hook scrapes the flyer. It slows the bobbin each time around, and makes a horrible clanking noise. Neither of which is conducive to a meditative spinning process.


And here's why I don't just put the hook someplace else. It's highlighted in pink here. Gordon Lendrum very nicely made a little cubby hole for the hook, where it lives in a very convenient spot. You can see again here how it's scraping up against the flyer.


And one more shot - I don't know if it has any bearing on the issue, but the yarn guides are on different sides of the flyer for the Lendrum and the WW...


So there we go. Am I doing something glaringly wrong? How do I fix this????


Edit:
This was just sent to me by Nathan Lee, of Woolee Winder after I sent him a link to the blog so he could see the pictures, too:

Amie,

I am sorry that you are having trouble with your WooLee Winder. It sounds like your Lendrum hook might be a little shorter then most. I don’t actually have mine anymore (someone took it at a show) but I am thinking that it should come all the way up out of the orifice. I don’t use the hook to thread the winder I just let a little of the yarn twist back on itself on it feeds through the orifice. (of coarse this only works with fine yarns)

I don’t remember if the wire of the hook is glued into the wood piece or if it is just pressed it. If you don’t see a glob of glue there you might be able to make the hook a little longer by grabbing the wire with a pair of pliers and pulling it out of the wood a little. (a twisting motion should work) or you could make a new wire piece out of music wire (available at any hobby store) and replace the wire piece of the hook.

I understand that the clearance of the hook from the flyer is a little tight but if you put the hook in so that the wire lies flat on the mother –of-all it should clear the flyer. You might need to bend the wire to one side a little to get it to lie flat.

As far as the tension problem, it is best to run as little tension as possible on both the drive band and the brake band.

Let me know if any of this helps, and remember that the WooLee Winder is 100% guaranteed so if you can’t get it to work to your satisfaction you can always return it.


Thanks,

Nathan Lee


2 Comments:

Blogger Larry said...

I haven't a clue what you're talking about. I don't spin and even when I did I didn't get that far. But I wanted to wish you and yours a happy holiday.

10:33 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hi, Amie. I asked Donald about this, and he reminded me that he has a second orifice hook which he uses with the WW on his Lendrum. He also does not keep the Lendrum hook in its cubby because of the scraping.

As for the funky draw of the yarn, I had that with my Schacht. It takes some fiddling with tension and such and just plain getting used to the WW. After a few days, I was in love with the WW.

Donna

7:33 PM  

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