Throwback Thursday - Spindle Tip Tutorial

 Back in 2021, I posted a photo tutorial on how I made the spindles I use just about every day. Since that post I've made at least another 4. As they break or wear out (the flicking area wears fast if you use them all the time!) I just buy new dowels and create more. The dowels themselves are something like $1 each, and at about 4 feet long, I cut them into 4 lengths and have a spindle for about 25 cents a pop. It ends up being slightly more than that, since I have to buy new blades for the craft knife from time to time, but even if we assume that doubles or triples the cost of the spindles, that's still pretty economical. I add the spiral notch because I happened to buy one made commercially that has that feature, and fell head over heels in love with it. It saves so much time over methods that require a half hitch (or two, sometimes) and not having to pause and make the knot lets me get into the flow state with spinning really easily. If you want to give it a try, it's fairly simple to do. This tutorial was made with my 4th or so attempt, and even subpar or imperfect results aesthetically speaking still make very serviceable spindles.

     I watched several whittling videos to get an idea of technique and how to achieve what I want, and then just kind of… made it up as I went. But! It turned out well, I think, so here’s what I did:

    So to start, obviously you’ll need a dowel. The one I’ll be working with is 3/8 inch or 1.8 cm, though the one on the right (whose angle is for plying) is 1/4 inch or 0.5 cm. This will work on pretty much any dowel size, I imagine, but I wanted you to have an idea of the scale.

    The first step is to lay a pencil at the angle you’d like the spiral to be, and roll the dowel in the direction you’d like the spiral to turn (away from you for z spin/singles, towards for s spin/plying), dragging the pencil the whole way to make a mark. It doesn’t have to be perfect, but especially the first few times you try this, it can help to erase any stray marks and really refine the line because this is what you’ll be using as a guide for the carving. It will look something like this:

    The bottom of the spiral should be closer to horizontal than vertical in order to catch the yarn; at the top, mark out a vertical section which will go roughly into the middle of the dowel to allow the the yarn out aligned with the dowel, curbing wobble.

    The next step is to create what YouTube videos tell me is called a “stop cut”. Press the blade of your knife into the wood a mm or 2 all along the pencil line, to create a kind of “wall” for the blade to stop at when you’re carving out the spiral. Unlike the pencil technique, this can’t be done in one smooth operation, it’s more of a press-release-turn-repeat kind of action, no slicing involved at all. When you finish it will look like this:

    It’s a little hard to see, but there’s a groove all along the pencil line, following it all the way up. From here, you’ll begin carving by placing the knife at an angle and “scooping” wood out of the dowel, like this:

    As you’re removing wood all along the line, it will sometime be necessary to turn the dowel upside down and carve out in the opposite direction to remove strips of leftover wood, like this:

    Make sure to keep all parts of your body, fingers especially, out of the path of the blade, in case of any slips. A dull blade is more likely to slip than a sharp one, so use the sharpest blade you can, and discard used blades once they start dulling.

    Continue in this way, all the way up the spiral. If you have these little rough bits in the groove, you can use the tip of the blade to neaten it up, or use sandpaper to smooth it out, but I’ve found that if you remove all the sharp bits, the motion of the yarn, and the oils from the wool and your fingers will soften and smooth the wood after relatively little use, so there’s no need to get really finicky with cleaning it up.

    I forgot to take pictures of this part in progress, but to work the vertical notch at the top, turn the whole operation 90 degrees, and work the knife vertically in a scooping motion away from your body. I can take some more photos of this later if it needs clarification, but once you get to this point, it should be fairly intuitive. It may be necessary to clean up the bottom of the top notch as you hollow out the center, in order to make a “hook” for the yarn to catch on. Once it’s done, it will look like this:

    This is a 1/4 inch (0.5 cm) dowel, not 3/8 inch (1.8 cm) dowel, but the end point is the same. You can see at this angle the depth of the notch. This lets the yarn travel out the center of the dowel, so if your spindle is wobbling badly, this is the first place to investigate. On my first try it wobbled quite a bit, until I added another mm or so to the center depth and created a bit of horizontal space under the notch to help seat the yarn a little more securely.

    The benefit to this method is that you can use it as a drop spindle without having to use a slip knot. To engage the yarn in the notch, just spin the spindle as you would to add twist to the yarn; to release it, keep tension on the yarn and spin the spindle in the opposite direction. It’s kind of hard to explain in writing, but very quick and intuitive in use. Hope this can help someone else!

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    Next week for Throwback Thursday, I'll repost an explainer on the hand held distaves I make and use. They are also similarly inexpensive and easy to make, plus there's a lot of room to customize and decorate those as well, if you're so inclined.