Sunday, August 29, 2010

New toy

Every once in a while I get on Marktplaats (Dutch selling site) to check out what people want to get rid of. This time I found a charkha, a spinningwheel from India. The last owner brought it to the Netherlands in 1973. It hasn’t seen much use.

Charkha01

This is what I got. No instruction included. Surfing the Net I found plenty of pictures, all of them looking different than this one. I got how the wheels work and I even figured out where the spindle goes. How I got the spindle to work was another story.

Thankfully I have a dad with a technical eye and we got it to work. I sanded, scrubbed, oiled and lubricated any part that moves. And after an intensive search I finally understand it better.

Charkha02

As you can see it works! It doesn’t spin quite as pleasant yet as I’d like. It’s going back to my technical advisor. Too bad I don’t have any cotton to spin (which is spun mostly on these) but the bit of BFL works just fine. As soon as I get the hang of this I’d like to use it to spin silk.

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