{"id":214,"date":"2020-05-22T20:00:25","date_gmt":"2020-05-22T19:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kildwickringers.org.uk\/?page_id=214"},"modified":"2020-05-23T09:01:13","modified_gmt":"2020-05-23T08:01:13","slug":"a-wool-winder","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/kildwickringers.org.uk\/index.php\/a-wool-winder\/","title":{"rendered":"A Wool Winder"},"content":{"rendered":"

What’s that got to do with bell ringing?<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

As a spin-off (pun intended) of a group I belong to, I have made a small ropewalk.\u00a0 I’m successfully producing small cordage in the 2-8mm diameter range.
\nBut, of course, I<\/em> <\/strong>want to make bell ropes!<\/p>\n

I have no aspirations to making full ropes for tower bells.\u00a0 They are better left to the experts – and, anyway, we don’t need new ropes for Kildwick.\u00a0 These ropes are for model bells, possibly up to Wombel size and down to little things, most useful as a light pull.<\/p>\n

But they all need the woolly sally near the end.<\/p>\n

To make these, we need to incorporate short lengths of wool into the strands as the rope is made – and that means cutting lots of short lengths of wool.\u00a0 To do this, wool is wound for a counted number of turns around a rod which has the required circumference.\u00a0 This is how it works:<\/p>\n

\"Wool<\/p>\n

First, make a winding machine.\u00a0 This was designed from scratch in a 3DCad program.\u00a0 It’s a pretty basic program, but it has the great advantage that I can get my head around how it works!\u00a0 All of these components are constructed by adding simple geometric shapes together.
\nThis design was modified before the final production model.\u00a0 Spot the differences!<\/p>\n

\"Wool
\nThe gear wheels are made so that the big one is twice the diameter (and has twice as many teeth) as the little one.\u00a0 That means that every turn of the big drive gear produces two rotations of the smaller slave gear. The back of the casing and a bearing need to be attached.<\/p>\n

\"Wool\"Winder<\/p>\n

Here, you can see the finished article, attached to a board.\u00a0 The “conjuror’s wand” is the mandrel for winding the wool and the far end is supported on a “foot” that slides to accommodate different lengths of mandrel.\u00a0 The knob is turned from a piece of Yew.<\/p>\n

\"Wool<\/p>\n

\"Wool\"Wool<\/p>\n

Winding.\u00a0 Count the turns of the handle and double it.\u00a0 The whole thing is laid in a trough and the wool sliced with a very sharp blade.<\/p>\n

\"Wool\u00a0 \"Three<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The cut pieces are clamped between two boards and set aside.\u00a0 The actual process of rope making may come as a separate page – but each of these three strips is inserted between the yarns that make up the three strands.<\/p>\n

\"The \"Close<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The wool twists into the rope as it is made – but if you look carefully at the close-up on the right, you’ll see that some of the ends of wool are caught back in the rope.\u00a0 There are some quite big, loose curls of both yellow and blue there – but also some very tight ones at the end.\u00a0 These need to be teased out.\u00a0 They call it “combing”, but it is harder work than that!<\/p>\n

\"Wool All of\u00a0 those hairy bits need to be trimmed to make a smooth sally.\u00a0 We are leaving around half of all that expensive wool on the cutting room floor!\"The<\/p>\n

The finished rope.\u00a0 I’m quite pleased with this one:\u00a0 The object is to make the top sufficiently flexible to prevent it slipping the wheel on a working model, while getting a tight enough twist on the sally.\u00a0 It’s not totally authentic, but it seems best to abandon the traditional hemp\/flax yarn and use (as in this case) cotton.<\/p>\n

\"Finished<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What’s that got to do with bell ringing? As a spin-off (pun intended) of a group I belong to, I have made a small ropewalk.\u00a0 I’m successfully producing small cordage in the 2-8mm diameter range. But, of course, I want … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-214","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildwickringers.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildwickringers.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildwickringers.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildwickringers.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kildwickringers.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=214"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/kildwickringers.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":245,"href":"https:\/\/kildwickringers.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/214\/revisions\/245"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kildwickringers.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}