Flea market treasures 18th and 19th century textile tools
ABT
Do you also like to go to garage sales and flea markets? There's always plenty to see. Sure - most of it is junk - but sometimes you can find some real treasures there and that at reasonable prices. Sometimes because of the seller him- or herself does not really know what he or she´s really got but much more often because what is for sale sells poorly. Why? Because nowadays no one can use something like that. Or do you spin and weave the fabric of all your clothes yourself? Therefore one can find real bargains now and then. Old tools that are actually worthy of being displayed in a local history or folk museum. Therefore the ABT offers you here a little virtual museum showing what can be found on flea markets or in the attic. Prices will not be revealed.
Fiber preparation
A pair of hand cards typically consists of two mobile square or rectangular paddles, but this pair has a bigger lower stationary part (length 42,52") and a mobile upper part (length 18,89"). On the mobile part the year 1839 is engraved. A pair of cards is used to brush the wool between them until the fibers are more or less aligned in the same direction. The type of yarn made from carded wool is called woolen (American English) or woollen (British and Canadian English).
Spinning the yarn
A spinner´s weasel or clock reel is a device for measuring yarn and turning it into a skein. It consists of a spoked wheel, each spoke having a crossbar at the end, with gears attached to a pointer on a marked face (which looks like a clock) and an internal mechanism which makes a "pop" sound after the desired length of yarn is measured. Some spinner´s weasels have a mechanism that clicks or pops for each turn of the reel instead of a “clock”. These are sometimes called click reels. When the wheel is turned it rotates a screw that in turn rotates a gear. The screw turns until the gear makes a complete revolution at which time a pin on the wheel will let a slim piece of wood slip over it and make a snapping sound.
After the yarn is wound onto the crossbars by turning the reel the skein can be further processed by washing, bleaching, dyeing or sold in this form. Rotating reels have at least four arms, but also five to eight-armed examples exist, very common are reels with six arms. They can stand free or be bolted to a table.
Spinning box (flax box). Length of the box: 16,92".
A spinning box is a cross between a supported spindle and a spinning wheel. It consists of a wooden box with elongated side parts into which a spindle with a drive wheel is clamped. It operates by pushing the drive in the box with the hand or foot and the thread jumps over the tip of the protruding shaft. If the tip has a reel that can be clipped onto the shaft you can just pull off the spool and the yarn must not be laboriously unwound from the spindle. Some evidence seems to indicate that they were (also?) used as bobbin winders (e.g. to wind yarn onto a bobbin or a pirn for a flying shuttle).