page_title: Spinning wheel
section_title: Double drive
hierarchical_section_title: Spinning wheel / Types / Treadle wheel / Double drive
caption_attribution_description: A picture of the flyer-bobbin system on a double drive spinning wheel
context_page_description: A "spinning wheel" is a device for spinning thread or yarn from fibres. It was fundamental to the cotton textile industry prior to the Industrial Revolution. It laid the foundations for later machinery such as the spinning jenny and spinning frame, which displaced the spinning wheel during the Industrial Revolution.
context_section_description: The double drive wheel is named after its drive band, which goes around the spinning wheel twice. The drive band turns the flyer, which is the horse-shoe shaped piece of wood surrounding the bobbin, as well as the bobbin. Due to a difference in the size of the whorls (the round pieces or pulleys around which the drive band runs) the bobbin whorl, which has a smaller radius than the flyer whorl, turns slightly faster. Thus both the flyer and bobbin rotate to twist the yarn, and the difference in speed continually winds the yarn onto the bobbin.  Generally the speed difference or "ratio" is adjusted by the size of the whorls and the tension of the drive band.
  The drive band on the double drive wheel is generally made from a non-stretch yarn or twine; candlewick is also used.b
caption: A double drive wheel
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