Snail Spirals

Part of the enjoyment of spinning is that you get to look at a piece of Beautiful Fiber Equipment. Furniture. Art. Whatever. The Danish Oil treatment (Watco "Natural" color Danish Oil, two coats) went very well, and my wheel is drool-worthy again.

This is the before shot. Not too bad; a little dull, but not horribly so. It certainly gets the job done.



The most noticeable improvement was on the drive wheel hub. It went from looking very very dried out and dull:



To fabulous:



The whole wheel was like this. I didn't even realize how dull it looked until I saw the improvement. The walnut areas really pop now,



the maple and walnut colors became richer and the contrast increased,



and the whole wheel has a beautiful luster now.



I mentioned in my last post that I did some tweaking and repair on the wheel to improve its performance. This involved taking out the three large bolts in the back upright, so that I could move around the walnut insert that's between the back legs. I was able to align this walnut piece and the smaller swinging piece on the inside that carries the crank in a brass bearing, so that the drive wheel now sits level and square to the frame, and the crank doesn't rub on the wood of the back walnut piece. I tightened the screws on that swinging piece so the drive wheel doesn't wobble anymore, either. It was fiddly, but it now spins almost perfectly silently, and very smoothly.



The second improvement was to replace the tension screw on the top of the wheel.



Somewhere along the line, Schacht switched from using a white plastic screw to the black metal one. It is a vast, vast improvement. The plastic one flexed as I spun, just from the motion of the flyer, and made the metal flyer support rattle annoyingly against the wood. I jimmied it with paper shims, which stopped the noise somewhat, but that made it hard to adjust the tension, as the paper would slip. I wish I could take the wooden knob from the old one and put it on the new one, but it's not that big of a deal. You can really see how much the maple has darkened as it aged!

This is the serial number plate that every Schacht Matchless wheel has:



If you look closely, you can see that the numbers read 082588 8. This means that my wheel was made on August 25, 1988, and it was the eighth one made that day. Twenty years old, this year. It was coming off the production line as I was preparing for my senior year of high school.



Ready to spin, once the oil finishes drying overnight and I put the drive band back on. My wheel and I are very happy today.