Wow, that’s great! It’s a knitting spool and drawplate all-in-one. I used to do this with silver wire and smaller dowels (5/8" or less); I had to use a non-reuseable wire harness as a substitute for this tool. My drawplate was an oak board I had drilled holes into. It maked really nice necklaces.
This tool looks like a much better way to start the weaving process.
They have been digging them up for over 100 years and wondering what they were. Thinking they had some sort of pathagorean religious significance.
Seems like they solved this puzzle finally. If it has other uses that would be quite the coincidence that it works so well as a knitting/weaving device.
Wow, even when I did knitting, I never heard of that! Now I wish I had a 3D printer to make a dodecahedron! But, we just had to buy a new refrigerator, so a 3D printer is totally out of the question. But I’m bookmarking this for sure!
@kelley1 - what’s a drawplate? Haven’t heard of that either.
Here’s a photo of the drawplate I made, along with a finished necklace:
This is great for woven/knitted metal. There are metal drawplates design to reduce thickness of wire. They have lots more holes with small incremental reductions in size.
You have a Glowforge! I have been contemplating making one for the Catalog if I can get out of having to make an official instruction set.
To make six pairs of pentagons with different size holes in the middle and sand an angle to each edge and use wood glue to put them together being careful to align each pair as opposites,
Then it is just a matter of drilling a hole at each point and place a short bit of bamboo kabab stick in the hole and a wood bead with a matching hole.
Made in B.Birch, it might not be strong enough for metal, but should work great for yarn.
if you look at @pubultrastar’s site, you can find a pattern that doesn’t need 3D pieces for the connectors, they’re laser cut from wood.
I was thinking about that but was thinking the links might get in the way of the sticks that have to pass through.
@kelley1 - thanks for showing me what a drawplate is! And that necklace is awesome!
@rbtdanforth - thanks for the info. If BB wouldn’t work, would acrylic or something like red oak?
@shop - thanks! I’ll check it out!
@pubultrastar 's designs are very strong but take up a lot of room inside that small of a Dodecahedron. So while just sanding and gluing sides to sides is more of a problem to get right there is plenty of room inside for the dowels.
Getting a decent look in transparent acrylic would be extremely hard. BB is plywood so stronger than strait wood.
The drawplate needs to be pretty robust if it isn’t metal. Notice that mine is oak and pretty thick…take a closeup look at the entry holes. With just a few years of use and silver necklaces, you can see how much abrasion occurred.
It takes a fair amount of force to pull the cable through, so acrylic won’t work. Whatever wood you use, I’d recommend a “collar” around the drawplate holes, in the same wood as the plate. It can be a decorative and a functional part.
Wow. How to make blue pigment.
Interesting. You can see why it would’ve been more expensive than gold, just the time it took to make by hand. Makes you wonder how someone would’ve thought, “Hmm, think I’ll take this pretty blue rock and make a powder/liquid out of it so I can use it to color stuff.”
It really hurt to see him bust up perfectly good lapis. One wonders if pumping hydrogen sulfide through fine powdered limestone would work or how much heat and pressure it would take.
Pigments and dyes are a treasure trove of interesting, involved processes. Here is one for a blue in which no lapis lazuli is harmed, indigo:
Sticking with blues, there is also woad.
While usually thought of as dyes, indigo and woad can also be used to make pigments (e.g., for paints).
I had a little jar of lapis crumbles for years that someone had given me to make into paint, but that involves some very delicate mixing with two other substances (which I can’t remember right now) so I never did it. I just donated it to an artists group so it would finally get made!
That blue has an other-worldly glow to it. Wow, indeed!
Woad has an interesting history also. I have some hanging about somewhere.
If anyone wants to do a deep dive into colors, this old episode of Radiolab is outstanding:
It’s an hour well-spent.
