Anne Hansen

The bobbin turns on its own tempo to wind the thread (bobbins groove for thread has it's own diameter, does not need to be the exact same as the flyer). The whorl goes at another tempo to make the twist in the thread. You can adjust the tempo for more or less twist You'll notice the ' pull' on the thread when you tighten it, the pull becomes more, so you either spin faster, or the thread is more twisted before it winds on the spool. The little hooks are only for dividing the thread equally over the spool, but you'd figured that out already of course. There are often two or more disks with grooves belonging to the whorl, you'll notice the difference in diameter. You can hook up the thread onto one or the other depending on how fast you want to spin. Tighten up the thread / snare afterwards by turning the handle on the front. To ensure the snare or thread is kept on a good tension, you need to have one continuous loop, divided in two loops, like with the rope games you played as a child. One loop goes over wheel and bobbin, the next over wheel and whorl, the thread crosses itself preferable on the bottom and is sewed together there, see pictures . I hope I make sense, it's a hard concept to grasp, in the category of ' just do it, don't figure it out' And english is obviously not my native language, but I hope it answers your question, if not somebody else may feel free to help.

I used to have one quite similar, mine was from the Netherlands, and primarily used for flax, but I spun wool on it and that worked fine too. Mine was made around 1850. Yours does look painted over, but not recently and the signs of wear do not appear to me as being from sanded over to give it a distressed look. But I can be wrong of course, just step back and look it over critically. If it looks like an old layer to you, I would avise to be very cautious with removing the upper oxblood red layer. There probably is another layer of paint beneath it, but that doesn;t mean the upper layer is 'wrong' it can very well be a true layer of history that  tells the story of the spinning wheels life. If however you really want to see what is beneath the upper layer, I recommend  to make a so called 'paint ladder' on the underside. You draw a little rectangle on the underside with a pencil, like a quarter of an ich wide, and one inch long, and carefully scrape off the paint per layer, one red, one yellow untill you reach the natural wood. That way you keep the damage controlled, this technique is used by restorers. I used to have a double snare that crosses itself once. It runs twice over the big wheel and splits when running over the flight and spool. I wound it around the wheel and then sewed the ends together. It would keep for weeks before it broke due to wear. It was made of hemp, but other threads will work also as long as they don't strech too much. You can make a knot in the thread of course, but if you sew the ends it looks neater and runs smoother and it is less tiring for the eyes ( flashing by). My spinning wheel started to come apart, it was too old so it is now a cherished heirloom. I use a modern wheel now. I hope you'll spend many happy hours spinning with it!