The Wool Merchant's Daughter

This is a spindle wheel that came to me last spring, and needed no restoration whatsoever:

In addition to being in excellent shape, it is complete and it is marked:

Unfortunately, the maker’s mark was not familiar to any of the spindle wheel community, so remains a mystery. The wheel shows excellent and innovative workmanship with a tilt tensioning device:

The spindle post has a section cut out and the MOA inserted and pierced through with a wooden screw. A turn of the wooden nut loosens or tightens the MOA. Note the cork on the spindle tip. This has about the sharpest spindle I’ve ever come across and one needs to be wary.

The drive wheel is exceptionally wide and the hub is also uncharacteristically wide:

It is held in place with what looks to be an original hand-forged nut, but then has been threaded and a modern nut added for stability. The hub is in excellent shape with no cracks. The spokes are all in place firmly.

The axle is interesting in that it appears to have been inserted from the wheel side out.

This wheel sold in the $100 range, which is an excellent price for a fully working spindle wheel that is in such good shape. Sometimes you have to figure out the price against restoration costs; if restoration is just a cleaning and oiling, that is less expensive than a wheel that is missing parts.

The real beauty of this wheel is that the drive wheel is only 41″ in diameter, making it an excellent “take-along” wheel for demonstrations. We will be doing quite a few in April and May, so stop by and say hello if we are in your area!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 18th, 2015 at 7:02 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.