In previous blogs I have written of my move to kumihimo on a marudai and also the further refinement (for Anne) of producing beaded kumihimo as a possible class to teach at the next Birchwood Fiber Festival (https://birchwoodfiberfestival.com/).
One aspect of this was to see if I could actually build a marudai with just rudimentary woodworking tools (I don’t have a lathe). So to make things easy I went straight to Hobby Lobby and bought a couple of ‘clock faces’ – the raw start for someone wanting to produce hand painted or other decorative faces along with the appropriate clock parts and cases. I only needed a round, and an oblong to start with. While these are very minimally finished white pine, they were enough for a trial. Along with some poplar dowels from Lowes, where Anne works I got to work.
Certainly not the good looking wood grain of my NZ marudai, but much easier to work with and structurally the same. Smaller in size, but this was designed for just the purpose of testing out beaded kumihimo. The next job was to start shaping the mirror (the top circular part).
The mirror also has a concave shape surrounding the center hole, all part of the overall ability to balance the center weight, the outer tamas (bobbins and yarn) with the friction as it passes over the outside edge and is made into the braid and is pulled down the central hole.
With the shaping done the whole thing was sanded through various grades of sandpaper up to 220 then multiple coats of varnish to give it a more resistant to abrasion finish. This won’t be a problem in future versions which will use a harder wood. It was just that I didn’t want to go buying expensive wood shapes only to find it didn’t work!
The only thing after this was to test it with some braiding.
The test without beads and then this one all worked out fine so I have reasonable confidence that I can put together workable marudais. If we go ahead with the class – not me, but Anne and Carla who is another local fiber artist and has already produced beaded kumihimo for sale – there will be an option for students to buy a marudai and tama set if they want, at the end of the course. For the weighted tamas I bought a whole lot of small wooden yarn bobbins and have experimented with drilling the center hole larger and then hammering lead shot into the hole and sealing the ends. The combined weight of yarn and bobbins (8 typically) is balanced with the weight of the bag that is attached to the end of the braid and pulls it down through the hole (another blog entry for that – but so far seems like it too will work).