Making my own spinning wheel!!!! First bought stuff for the DODEC wheel and then The Porter Wheel project was available for download - needed to buy another board and a few odds and ends of hardware and I’m on my way. Instructions are definitely a work in progress (updates are promised) but I’m managing to get through them pretty well. Only had to rip apart one part of the ‘base’ (put the 12” board on the wrong way… and I was able to hide the pry marks. Definitely plan on staining this blue… just wondering how! I love to experiment!.

Now - outside to take pictures!

7.21.13 - Foot pedal/treadle is Cock-eyed - how does one get the hinge on ‘straight’? :( Hoping it won’t impact movability. Don’t think so.

Staining. Ended up (after fruitless Google search full of ads for commercial wood stains) using Wilton Foodcoloring Gel (’Cornflower Blue’) thinned with vinegar (it just floated in blobs in the turpentine I initially tried.) The vinegar temporarily turned it blue-green, but once that evaporated/soaked in, it looked blue-purple like I had intended. Once that’s good and dry, I think I’ll assemble and then give it finish coats of either Polyurethane or Tung Oil.

7.22.13 - Further Googling this morning shows there is some history of dying/staining wood with alternative dyes. This is one link from a woodworking site:
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?121497-Hollow-.... This morning I tried thinning with both water and with vinegar - I’ll also try to demo the difference the finishes will make have ready made sample with the four extra pieces :) (preliminary picture in project pictures.) So far it looks like the water thinned doesn’t change color and, maybe, the pink pigment is more separated from the blue than with the vinegar (I also chanced upon the Kool-aid dyer’s forum here this morning and it’s called ‘breaking’ the dye into its separate color components… Geeky Fun Abounds!)

7/23/13 - Tung Oil finish in progress. Very little teal is left - so I guess the vinegar effect is temporary. Observations: I was lazy and didn’t smooth finish any of the pieces and it’s obvious - the cross-cut ends, especially, are pretty rough looking - very porous and taking up lots of the the dye and the Tung Oil. Color itself is pretty uneven (streaks, fingerprints, etc.) - not horrid, but might bother a perfectionist. Similarly, I applied color after gluing and it’s pretty obvious (the dye turned the glue green - pretty strong contrast to the purple/teal/blue of the rest of it.) You might want to dye before glueing anything. Bleh!

2nd spindle (green in picture) is so much closer to straight. I pre-drilled the center of each individual block with a smaller bore drill-bit and then glued together. When dry, I drilled the 7/32” hole for the dowel through the same space and it’s relatively straight. I’ll try the blue one once I get everything together - but it probably will be wobbly, at best, so I’m thinking to fill in the existing hole with wood putty, let it dry, and then re-drill more carefully.

7/24/13 - More or less finished… I had assembled it last night and tried it out and the ‘drive band’ kept coming off. I drove in a small piece of wood behind the flywheel post where it goes into the base as I left too much of a gap and the whole post wobbled severely. Also contacted

http://www.ravelry.com/people/Bishopofknit

via the forums and he suggested taking additional wood off of the corners of the flywheel and re-doing the nails so that they stuck out as far as possible - that did the trick! I’m using nylon twine as the drive belt and for the foot pedal - the plant fiber twine I had (cotton? jute?) just shredded and stretched too much. The double knot trick is The Bomb for joining. (Argh - I’ve lost the link - it’s somewhere here in the Dodec discussions).

And wouldn’t you know it, I’m going to have to learn to spin all over again - my first foot or so of spinning just a few minutes ago looks like my first efforts of spindle spinning. But the end is in sight!!! :)