Tour de Fleece 2013 - stage seven

Have I been at this a whole week already?  Time is going so quickly and I have so much to do.  Sometimes I feel like things just tumble along and hope they don't fall.

Still slowly working on lace, but also working on reproductions of medieval spindles.

I picked up some soap stone from a yard sale last weekend.  After trying different tools and methods, we found that the tile saw is the easiest tool to rough out the shape and these old files I pick up at yard sales are great at shaping the stone.  You can also use the pointy bit that use to go in the handle to work the stone as well as the file part.

When the whorls are done, they slip onto the spindles and stay there by magic of friction.  Because this kind of spindle is usually used for in-hand or semi-supported spinning, the balance isn't as critical as with a drop spindle.

I suspect that I'm making these too large and too heavy, so I'll give a try at making smaller ones later on.