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Drive band problems

My Kromski has given me no end of driveband problems: the thing has been eating drive bands at the rate of one per hour of spinning. The importer/distributor was no help; they suggested that I sand the rim and all the bobbins to ensure no rough spots were eating my (wet-spun long-line linen) drivebands or my hemp drivebands. In making that suggestion the importer overlooked that I had already done the sanding and was still having problems :P

Today I got out a spindle and my bag of tussah silk sliver and spun myself a driveband. The Z-spun single was almost too fine to be seen. I made four Z-plied 2-ply strands, which I plied back together S. The resulting cabled strand is certainly not "soft and silky" as most of us probably think of silk! It is probably plied tightly enough to repel water and is correspondingly hard. I'd compare it to #20 perle cotton in terms of finished size but it is much smoother and harder.

I have high hopes that *this* drive band will make it to the 20-hour mark. We'll see!

Reply to
WoolyGooly
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You continue to amaze me with your resourcefulness!!

Shelagh

Reply to
Shillelagh

Does it literally fray till it snaps? I don't get it - what could it be wearing on? Let us know how the new one goes.

VP

Reply to
Vintage Purls

The OEM drive cord was some horrid jute crap about the diameter of Cat5 cable and it shed like nuts just being handled so I didn't even bother with it. The knot would have been horrendous anyhow and a lap-splice not much better.

The cotton drivebands I tried literally disintegrated: I'd be spinning merrily along and suddenly my drive band would fly off in pieces.

Hemp cord (bought at the craft store) fared not much better: It shredded and shed, and would eventually experience differential slip along it's length in that where it was shredding the worst different overlapping fibers within the cord would slip over each other in opposite directions. Quite frustrating the first couple of times it happened, as I didn't know it was happening and I kept cranking out the mother, which made the problem worse, ad naus.

Long-line wet-spun linen fared better than either hemp or cotton, but only barely. The linen wore away pretty evenly along it's entire length and deposited a nice runnel of powdered flax fiber on the bench. I could get 8-10 hours of spin time off one driveband though, versus a couple of hours from hemp or about 30 minutes from cotton.

So far I have about 3 hours on the silk driveband with no apparent wear. There's a bit of fuzzing on the knot -- I didn't do a lap-splice this time as I wanted to see how the silk holds up before I do any join more time-consuming than a square knot). Silk does appear to be promising, however.

The distributor's solution was for me to 1. sand the wheel rim to remove rough spots and 2. try different materials. I had done both of these prior to asking for guidance from the distributor so they've basically blown me off.

At any rate, the girl is spinning again, and I'm about to pull another shot of espresso and lug her out to the patio for some quality outdoor time.

Reply to
WoolyGooly

WoolyGooly spun a FINE 'yarn':

WoolyGooly. . .

Let us/me know how the silk works out! Noreen who is still debating a Kromski

Reply to
YarnWright

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