Caldwell County MO Archives History .....FLAX WHEELS AND SPINNING WHEELS 
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File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Karen Walker khw4@yahoo.com September 4, 2008, 1:25 pm

FLAX WHEELS AND SPINNING WHEELS
	Narrator:  Mrs. Will Irvin, 78, Iberia

     The interviewer knew Mrs. Irvin while teaching in Iberia Mo. Mrs. Irvin 
had two old wheels in her rummage room, a big spinning wheel and a smaller one 
which the interviewer called a "small spinning wheel."
     Mrs. Irvin interrupted her.  "Don't call it a spinning wheel, it is a 
flax wheel."  Then she explained the difference.  She had used them both in 
her Ozark home where the spinning wheel and flax wheel lasted longer than in 
some sections.  The flax wheel is used to make thread from flax, which most 
farmers there always raised.  The big wheel (equal in size to a buggy wheel) 
was used to make yarn from cards of wool.  Neither could do the work of the 
other.  Cards of wool were not ordinarily made at home but taken to the 
neighboring carding mill.  Although some families did have hand carding 
machines.  The cards were about 2 feed long, an inch thick in the middle, less 
at the ends.  It looked like the pictures in ancient times of cards of wool.  
Mrs. Irvin still had a card of old wool.
     Now these cards were connected, and the spinner whirled the wheel by hand 
thus producing a whirling noise, and the yarn which would be knit into 
stocking and mittens.  So much for the method and product of the spinning 
wheel.  The flax wheel was much smaller, about 20 inches in diameter, and 
lower.  It ran by foot power on the treadle, and the worker did not touch the 
wheel by hand.  This flax thread was used for weaving into goods.  They made 
flax sheets, cloths and curtains.
     Interviewed  1930.


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