Serpentine Celtic Knot Drop Spindle Whorl

thingiverse

~12g whorl, 2.75" diameter with notch and dowel insert. This lightweight spinning tool is perfect for hand-spinning extremely fine fiber, as shown in the last photo with 21 micron merino wool. Print Settings Printer: Maker Select 3D Printer v2 Rafts: Yes Supports: Yes Infill: 15% Notes: The printed weight of this whorl is approximately 13 grams, including braces, raft and supports. It's extremely light, making it ideal for spinning lace and cobweb weight yarn. Gcode prints vertically on a small raft with built-in braces that easily break away by hand, and supports through the dowel rod hole that are easily chipped out. Post-Printing Tools Required 1 hook Power drill with bit correctly sized for hook 1 dowel rod, .31" in diameter The cone sticking out of the center is where your hook will go. I've cut off the cone from my finished product, drilled down into the dowel from the top of the whorl, and then hand-screwed in the hook. No glue required! This design was inspired by a pattern found in the Book of Kells and slightly redesigned for this purpose. It's based on an illustration in the book Celtic Art - The Methods of Construction by George Bain, which is Plate 6 of Page 111. I scanned this image and ran it through Adobe Illustrator to create the patterns for the whorl top, then traced them in SketchUp and built the body. When I checked my slicer, it was going to weigh around 38 grams, so I imported it into TinkerCAD and cut out tubes from the bottom, which significantly reduced its weight. I began test printing it vertically because it saved about half of what it would have taken lying flat, and the curved braces helped to eliminate a chunky bottom section.