Customer Reviews

A No-Lathe Saxony-Style Spinning Wheel Construction Manual (Spinster Helper Series)

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

from the Halcyon Yarn website

20 photographs, and 7 plan drawings will help you make your own wheel. You will need fairly good wood-working skills and access to a band saw (jig saw or saber saw will work), table circular saw, and drill press or hand electric drill. A jointer, and a disc or belt sander are recommended but not required. This is not a beginner's project but could be fascinating.

The design itself is fine to make a spinning wheel. The idea of laminating two rim pieces onto a narrower piece to make the wheel is neat. The problem is that the booklet is poorly laid out. The descriptions of each part that you make are not clearly connected to diagrams or pictures. The part pictures are low detail, bad quality photocopies that would have been much better as drawings. Most of the reproduction photographs of how to work some critical steps are useful, but again, some are washed out, grainy and hard to understand. The detail drawings for parts are quite useful. The list of materials in the end of the booklet is absolutely useless; instead of giving an overall listing pieces of wood and parts that you can take to the hardware store, such as four feet of 1x6, each sub part of the spinning wheel is listed with its final cut size. You have to back out what you'll need to buy. Almost any other spinning wheel design/plan book is better than this one.

I bought this book for my Dad who was interesting in building a spinning wheel. The wheel he made is beautiful and works wonderfully!

It's a small and simple book, and it shows you how you can make your own spinning wheel without the expense of a lathe. I'm hanging on to this book for sure, and will eventually make my own spinning wheel. The author makes it sound almost as simple as making a spindle.

This book was an inspiration behind the making of our spinning wheel. Nice book, great transaction.