What shape the hooks?

[Jonzjob]

Thank you for the photos BP. It looks very simple and as I said, I was trying to avoid the metal top hook. Mine is all one bit of wood. That takes a bit more effort, but I think it's worth it. Plus, I like to 'tart' my stuff up a bit 😃

I had wondered about a notch in the flywheel. That's quite logical and I shall 'insert' one. 👍

[BPokorny]

I missed the part of the metal hook.  I don't fully understand why they used that instead of carving it in like you did. I remember attaching the wool to the hook and using the groove to guide the yarn/wool so I think that part is important. Sorry, I'm not much help on that. I can look for my notes on that class and see what I can find or hopefully someone else with more knowledge of this can help you.

[Jonzjob]

No worries on that one BP. There is a thread on spinning in the Special Crochet & Fiber Techniques

So I put a thread in there, but thank you for your help anyway. The metal hook is a lot easier than the way I did it and that's probably why? I think that mine looks nicer though 🤓

I seems there is as much variation in drop spindles as there is in the hooks 😟😟

[BPokorny]

Great!! I was going to suggest that. I looked on Pinterest and read some articles but couldn't find out that much about the spindle itself but I would say that 90% had metal hooks except for the real old,old ,old ones. Good luck with them and keep us posted on both your hooks and spindles!  

[Jonzjob]

With the world in lock down not much happening, but hey-ho, that's life at the moment unfortunately!

 

[JoPeep]

Your hooks are beautiful! I use the 8mm,9mm and 10mm a lot to make blankets. However, I have hitchhiker's thumb so I have trouble with my thumb bending backwards and getting sore. I made a little thumb brace that fixed it but I also made an egg hook by wrapping some yarn around my hook until it was like an egg in my hand and made it harder for me to hyper extend my dumb hitchhiker's thumb.  There aren't many egg hooks on the market. Only 2 saw on Amazon and one is plastic. They are mainly made for people with arthritis but really helped with my thumb too.

 

[Jonzjob]

Blimey JoPeep, that hook looks more like a boat hook!

That style of hook is just as simple as any of the hooks that I have turned, but it would be slightly less bumpy, I hope 😉😉 I have arthritic hands and wrists and the pens I do are that form in order to make them a lot easier to use so I can understand the reasoning.

What sort of length are the hooks you use. As I said before, I am a complete thicky on crocheting but learning quickly, I hope?

Also, earlier in the thread I said about being interested in the spinning side also. Well, I am now the owner of a fairly rough and ready book charkha. I made it as a try-and-see to find out how it works? This is it

All I have to do now is to learn to spin 😱😱

 

[Granny Square]

Hi Johnzjob, Jopeep's hook is probably about 15mm long.  I measured a Boye and Hero hook which measured alike and I'm guessing other brands would be close as well.

I had never heard of a "book charkha" (had to look it up), it looks fascinating and mysterious (I'm not a spinner).  The wire thingy that you demonstrated in the middle looks like a swift, not sure if that is just a US term or not.  Shortest video I could find on using a manual ball winder and swift to wind a hank of yarn.

 

[Jonzjob]

Hi Granny S, no not quite. It's the thingy for winding the shanks off of the spindle.

Thank you for the gen on the hook length. Things like that make it a lot easier to get it right.

 

[JoPeep]

The hook in my picture is a standard 5 inch long 10 mm . I have only been crocheting a short time and I know nothing about spinning but the yarn winder looks interesting.  Yes the wound hook is bumpy but it's soft and comfortable and its all I could  up with at the time to help keep my thumb from bending back. The thumb brace I made works much better and it is comfortable too.

[Jonzjob]

I really love the measures still in use around the world. I'm not digging at you JoPeep, but so many times I see, and use, Imperial and metric in the same measurement and it reminds me of a story told by a friend after he had been to a wood yard.

He had asked for some 2" X 4" wood and wanted 10'. The bloke told him it was sold in meters and he got what he wanted, but when he asked the price he was told that it was 10 pence a foot! He swore bling that it actually happened and I believe him.

As for your hook. The most important thing is that YOU are happy with it and it's comfortable, so good for you lass. Comfort beats fashion hands down every time and as a right scruff, but comfortable, I know.😍 Just look at my avatar.

Edited April 12, 2020 by Jonzjob

[Granny Square]

I  wish we silly Yanks would go metric.  I remember all the hand-wringing in the 1970s about how awful that would be, now we look pretty silly IMO.

I spent most of my working life working with metric product specs, and having most of the people I dealt with outside the US.  And learning to spell out dates (like Apr 12, 2020 not 4/12/20), so no one would think I was talking about December.

I use metric all the time in crafting, it's so much easier to measure and divide in metric than have to go "let's see, two and five sixteenths into 25 is..."    

[Jonzjob]

I tend to use both but much favour Imperial. I can see 3/16ths in my minds eye, but 4.5mm 😟

Just as a matter of interest you still didn't get the date correct for this side of the pond. It should have been 12/4/20 or 12th April 2020. 😍 🙃

[Granny Square]

Ha ha, true. I guess it was a compromise, as my boss and part of my work group was in the US, for everybody else my dates were just oddly worded but not ambiguous. 

The last leg of my career the company HQ was in Scotland (near Glasgow) and I'm sure for them my compromise date format was nothing compared to my struggle to 'translate' Glaswegian on the fly during telephone conferences with HQ folks.  It always seemed like random Scrabble syllable tiles tossed at me that I'd have to quickly arrange in the right order before the next toss.   

[Jonzjob]

Don't worry about not understanding Glaswegian Granny S. I don't either half the time. Geordy or Scouse are similar. Search on them 🤪 One of the blokes I worked with when I worked as a mainframe hardware service engineer, a little firm you may have heard of, IBM, He was from Aberdeen and his accent after a couple of pints made the Glaswegians sound like the Queen's English 😵

 

[Granny Square]

The first company I worked for was a little tech company too (Xerox) before my Scottish connections...