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You are here: Home / All blog posts / A visit to Schacht Spindle Co.
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June 17, 2016 by Tien Chiu

A visit to Schacht Spindle Co.

I couldn’t possibly have left Colorado without a visit to Schacht Spindle Co, which is the biggest U.S. manufacturer of weaving and spinning equipment. So my friend Alison and I went for a factory tour.

We started at the beginning: with wood. Schacht buys wood by the semi-truckload, then lets it acclimate in this area of the giant warehouse that is their factory:

wood section at Schacht Spindle Co
wood section at Schacht Spindle Co

They use mostly maple, with some cherry and walnut. (The cherry mostly goes into their Schacht-Reeves spinning wheels, but they occasionally make looms out of it, too.) The wood arrives rough, then gets cut to specifications, and the edges rounded as appropriate.

Next step was the router. Here’s the jig for their 15″ end-feed shuttles:

jig for end-feed shuttles
jig for end-feed shuttles

It was fascinating to see a shuttle in its nascent stages, just a groove in a piece of wood.

For ease of manufacturing, some parts are manufactured in pairs. Here’s a pair of pieces for a Wolf trap – a device used on their “Wolf” looms, fortunately, not something deadly to animals! The pieces are symmetrical and will be cut apart in another step.

two pieces for a Wolf trap
two pieces for a Wolf trap

After creation of the pieces, the next step is assembly. Here’s the wheel part of a spinning wheel being assembled:

wheel portion of a spinning wheel
wheel portion of a spinning wheel

Because clamping the individual bits together would require a ton of space, Schacht uses jigs to hold the wheel parts tightly together while gluing. In the photo above, a shim is being inserted to ensure a wheel part stays in place.

Here’s another photo, this time tapping down a shim:wheel for a spinning wheel being assembled

wheel for a spinning wheel being assembled

Here are some of the glued-together wheels:

assembled flywheels
assembled flywheels

Schacht also has a CNC machine, which is used for some of the more complex cuts. Here are some nascent end-feed shuttles which have been roughed into shape:

partially completed end-feed shuttles
partially completed end-feed shuttles

Once pieces are finished and sanded, they go to the finishing room, where they are dipped in a vat of finishing compound (polyurethane) and then rubbed down to ensure a smooth, even finish. Here a worker is rubbing down part of a spinning wheel:

finishing room at Schacht Spindle Co
finishing room at Schacht Spindle Co

Some of the pieces require specialized equipment, so they are outsourced to specialist manufacturers. This is a part made from laminated plywood – many thin sheets of wood are glued together, steamed, then formed into shape with a mold.

molded plywood
molded plywood

Here’s the same piece, being assembled into a spinning wheel:

spinning wheel assembly
spinning wheel assembly

And here is a fully-assembled wheel:

fully assembled wheel
fully assembled wheel

Here’s a loom being assembled:

loom assembly
loom assembly

Here are some completed looms being prepared for shipping. They are placed on cardboard platforms, then slid into a shipping box later:

Wolf looms waiting to be shipped
Wolf looms waiting to be shipped

No spinning wheel is shipped until someone has actually spun on it, to test the mechanics. This Schacht-Reeves wheel is done, and awaiting its final testing.

wheel awaiting testing

Our final stop on the tour was the Schacht showroom, which has demo models of all their products. Being a weaver, I naturally gravitated towards the looms:

looms in Schacht showroom
looms in Schacht showroom

As we left the factory, we encountered something we hadn’t expected: chickens!

chickens!
chickens!

It turns out they belong to the workers: Schacht gives them both a community garden space and the opportunity to keep their own chickens in the company coop. Who would have thought of fresh eggs as a bonus for working in a spinning and weaving factory?

My tour was fascinating, but you should really take your own. Tours are by appointment, so contact Schacht to schedule yours!

And, finally, I’ve been missing our wonderful cats. So Mike has been giving them daily belly rubs and cat treats for me, and sending me photos of them to alleviate severe cat deprivation. Here’s Tigress, posing with her namesake. Could we call it “A Tale of Two Tigers”?

Two tigers!
Two tigers!

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Filed Under: All blog posts, weaving

Previous post: Estes Park
Next post: Complexity, Creating Craft, and charity causes

Comments

  1. Jayne Chandler says

    June 17, 2016 at 6:22 am

    Enjoyed the Schacht tour. Have you toured the AVL factory, or would you, please?

    • Tien Chiu says

      June 18, 2016 at 5:07 am

      Alas, they don’t give tours! Or I certainly would have while I was there.

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