Fine yarns! What spinner hasn’t drooled over a project that calls for a fine lace weight yarn be it a lovely lacy shawl knit with singles or a pair of socks that requires a finely spun and plied yarn?

A fine yarn, as defined by the Craft Yarn Council Of America consists has a WPI of 50+ for singles; 35+ for plied, has 2,500+ yards per pound (for cottons and wools), and knits to a gauge of 22 to 40 stitches in four inches on US needle sizes 000 to 1.

Fleece choices for soft, fine yarns include any of the fine wool breeds such as: Merino and Rambouillet. Fine yarns need a high degree of twist and spinners will typically want to use their highest ratio (smallest diameter) whorls and set the wheel for very low tension. But what if your wheel doesn’t have a small diameter whorl and your highest ratio is something like...say...8:1?

Of course the first solution to the problem of getting enough twist into the yarn is to treadle faster which tends to get tiring after a short time, especially when fast is not your normal treadling speed. Yes, this will work. We can adjust to our tool. Or, we can adjust our tool.

There are several ways to adjust a wheel to spin fine yarns.

The easiest way is the most expensive way. Buy fat core bobbins. Besides the cost, these are not available for all makes of wheels. Fortunately it’s easy and inexpensive to rig your own fat core bobbins. There are two ways of doing this:
1. Buy some foam pipe insulation. This is found at mst hardware stores and comes in the form of a long, gray tube that is slit up one side. Measure the diameter of the shaft of your bobbins and look for the size of pipe insulation that has an inside diameter that is as close as possible to the outside diameter of your bobbin shaft. This material can be easily cut with a knife or scissors, so cut it to the same length as your bobbin shaft, open it at the side slit and slide it right over the shaft. It’s easily removable, requires no glueing or taping and will not leave any marks on the wheel.
2. Spin half a bobbin full of thicker yarn, making sure that it fills the bobbin evenly. Then cut a piece of light weight paper to fit the length of the bobbin and long enough to cover the thick yarn on the bobbin. Wrap the paper around the existing yarn and tape down. Your bobbin now has a fat core and is ready for spinning fine yarns.

Lacing the hooks is another way to rig a wheel. Thread the leader through one hook as usual, then take it across the flyer to a hook on the opposite arm, then back around a hook on the opposite side and then through the orifice. This can be used with fat core bobbins but as the bobbin fills, the yarn winding on will rub against the yarn already on the bobbin.

Stretching the drive band before spinning is a good trick for spinning fine yarns on bobbin lead wheels that have poly drive bands. Pull the drive band up and let it rest on the back upright for an hour or so before spinning. If there is no back upright in a good position for this, try tucking a folded washcloth or two under the drive band. You want to get about an inch of stretch on the drive band to release its degree of “grab” on the bobbin whorl. Don’t worry about stretching the drive band out of shape permanently - a stretched poly drive band will return to its normal configuration after resting for a period.