Spinning Tuesdays: Sometimes It’s Not What You Think

This is my wheel Suzie-Q, she has a squeaking problem.

Majacraft Suzie Pro, a naughty squeaker

To be frank, she has a naughty squeaking problem. When I treadle her she sounds like  honeymooners going at it on an antique iron bed. Funny at first, but it quickly gets annoying.

I love this wheel. I love to make singles and ply on her. She fantastic for big air or textured yarn. She’s heavy and sexy and spins forever. She got so noisy I almost quit using her altogether.

 

For a while, I thought she just needed oil or that it had something to do with how the treadles were attached in the back.

I thought it was the green bits

See the green bits? I call them rubber baby treadle bumpers. I thought they were the cause of the squeak and dusted them with cornstarch. Still squeaking, and probably laughing at me.

 

I took Suzie-Q to First Saturday Spinning at The Spinning Loft. She started doing her thing, everybody laughed, except Nora. She has a Majacraft Rose.  She said, “I know what’s wrong and how to fix it. One or more of the treadle screw holes is stripped”.

She was right. I never would have guessed it.

 

 

She fixed hers using wood filler to make the screw holes tighter. I used toothpicks and glue. I didn’t want to use bigger screws because I was afraid of splitting the wood.

 

 

I figured out that the squeak was coming somewhere in the left front.

The front bottom hinges

I unscrewed and rescrewed the screws to determine which hole was stripped.

Unscrewed

The center screw in the right set of hinges wouldn’t tighten completely, bingo. To be thorough, I decided to tighten up all three holes in the set.

 

I used a wooden toothpick in each screw hole to give the screw something to bite into.

toothpick as filler

I coated each toothpick with Gorilla Glue and tapped it into the screw hole as far as it would go.

Gorilla Glue to set it

I let it dry, broke off the toothpick and lightly sanded the holes level. I cleaned and oiled the hinge and screwed it back into place, tightly.

I sat right down and spun. No squeak.

I have my Suzie-Q back in regular spinning rotation and she’s as sexy and swampy as the song she’s named for.