Do I feel stupid? Yes! The Shacht Matchless is an amazing wheel and I was so disappointed that I was having trouble with mine. I remembered that when I first got it brand new, I had trouble with the treadles not wanting to treadle. Vince called Schacht and they told him a few things to try but it never felt right. That’s the one I was trying to use yesterday and couldn’t make it do anything. The fiber kept breaking, the treadles were stiff. If I took all the fiber out and didn’t try to spin, but simply worked the foot treadles, they worked fine.
A little background or . . you might call it my defense:
This is looking down from the top of the Lady Bug. It has Scotch tension. The driveband (black band) comes over the whirl and the Scotch tension cord (the twine looking thing) goes over the end of the brown bobbin.
The Matchless has both Scotch tension and Double Drive tension and you use one or the other – not both.
I had it set up with both strings (“Double”) over the whorl AND the Scotch tension loop over the back of the bobbin so I had double the tension. No wonder the treadles couldn’t get the dang thing to turning.
Last night, a very nice blog reader was sending me suggestions. She wrote a couple of things, and I wrote back but then, when she wrote this: “On the Matchless, do you have it set up as double drive or Scotch tension? It sounds like you have the tension too tight.” . . that’s when it hit me. I had the Double Drive AND the Scotch tension on. Poor Matchless. I’m sorry it arrived in the home of a crazy woman!
I marched myself right in there, took the Scotch tension off, placed the Double Drive bands where they were supposed to be and .. I love my Matchless! It’s running perfectly.
Today . . I shall spin all my troubles away! 🙂
Thank you, Joyce! Even though she wasn’t sure what was wrong, she said just what I needed to hear to make me realize what I was doing wrong. The crazy thing is that the second Matchless is sitting right next to it and it was all set up correctly. How did we do that . . one right and one wrong? I guess we set them up a month or so apart and we read the directions once and once we didn’t.
Anyway, I’m a happy spinner!
lIZ says
When you come up for air with all your spinning, check out the cookeatpaleo . com site. It has some keto recipes for the air fryer as well as a roasted asparagus soup that looks great. I need to grab some asparagus on my next trip to the store. Wish I could just go out to the garden to pick some!
Joyce says
Yay! Glad your wheel is spinning along… 🙂
Nelle Coursey says
YEA!!! So glad you figured it out!!
Rebecca in SoCal says
I’m glad you can use your Matchless!
dezertsuz says
Yay! Now I’m looking forward to seeing your next spinning!