Unravelings: miniSpinner review, part 1

December 29, 2009

miniSpinner review, part 1

Small, portable electric spinners have been around for decades. I have tried almost all of them, and have never really loved any enough to part with my hard-earned cash. Most of them were ugly, noisy, hard to adjust and difficult to spin on. The closest to my idea of what an electric spinner should be was the Spin Tech, which may or not be in current production; no one really seems to know.

Enter the miniSpinner. I was intrigued when a brochure promoting it was part of the goodie bag I received at the Spin Off Autumn Retreat (SOAR) in October 2009. I called the designer and builder, Kevin Hansen, and asked if I could review the spinner. Kevin was kind enough to send me one and I spent many hours putting it to work.

My personal thoughts about the miniSpinner will be the topic of parts 2 and 3 of this review; but first, a little history of the miniSpinner, direct from Kevin Hansen.

My wife Beth and I spent several years sailing in the Pacific. During that time, we stayed nearly a year in Tasmania, where Beth became interested in spinning. She started with a drop spindle and alpaca fiber. Not the easiest way to learn to spin, but if you can spin alpaca, you can spin about anything!

Now, you can only play with a drop spindle for so long before you want to move to bigger and better things. The only problem was, a conventional wheel was far too large for our boat. But, thanks to the suggestions of Tassie friend Charles Payne, the first miniSpinner, (now known as “Mark 1”) was conceived. My brother and I made it as a proof-of-concept in pine – really crude - but Beth spun away many happy hours on it.

After Tasmania, we moved on to New Zealand where a local friend became enchanted with Beth's spinner and wanted to purchase it. So, since I'd been thinking of producing these on a commercial basis anyway, we sold Mark 1 and I built a much nicer model, “Mark 2”, while onboard our sailboat in the Maharangi River on North Island, NZ. Several years (and many hours of spinning on Mark 2) passed. We finished our Pacific cruise and sold Red, our sailing home of nearly 10 years, and we moved on to design and build a home in Chimacum, Washington.

Once the house was mostly finished I had time to revisit the spinner project. I found an industrial-strength motor, designed a much improved microcomputer-based speed controller, made it prettier and more sophisticated, and in general turned it into a “real” product. Now I make them in production runs of 20 or more! It's been a lot of fun to design and build these, and I hope you enjoy using yours.

Happy Spinning! Kevin Hansen

You can find the miniSpinner at Hansen Crafts.

Posted at 12:47 PM in Spinning | Permalink

Comments

My personal thoughts about the miniSpinner will be the topic of parts 2 and 3 of this review; but first, a little history of the miniSpinner, direct from Kevin Hansen.

My wife Beth and I spent several years sailing in the Pacific. During that time, we stayed nearly a year in Tasmania, where Beth became interested in spinning. She started with a drop spindle and alpaca fiber. Not the easiest way to learn to spin, but if you can spin alpaca, you can spin about anything!

Now, you can only play with a drop spindle for so long before you want to move to bigger and better things. The only problem was, a conventional wheel was far too large for our boat. But, thanks to the suggestions of Tassie friend Charles Payne, the first miniSpinner, (now known as “Mark 1”) was conceived. My brother and I made it as a proof-of-concept in pine – really crude - but Beth spun away many happy hours on it.

After Tasmania, we moved on to New Zealand where a local friend became enchanted with Beth's spinner and wanted to purchase it. So, since I'd been thinking of producing these on a commercial basis anyway, we sold Mark 1 and I built a much nicer model, “Mark 2”, while onboard our sailboat in the Maharangi River on North Island, NZ. Several years (and many hours of spinning on Mark 2) passed. We finished our Pacific cruise and sold Red, our sailing home of nearly 10 years, and we moved on to design and build a home in Chimacum, Washington.

Once the house was mostly finished I had time to revisit the spinner project. I found an industrial-strength motor, designed a much improved microcomputer-based speed controller, made it prettier and more sophisticated, and in general turned it into a “real” product. Now I make them in production runs of 20 or more! It's been a lot of fun to design and build these, and I hope you enjoy using yours.