⠀I’ve already written the perfect paper tubes right here. In that article, I deliberately did not touch one point: how best to twist: on a table or on the weight in your hands.
⠀⠀⠀⠀I think it’s because I think you can twist it perfectly on both the weight and the table. The choice of a comfortable way depends on different and very subjective things. And in this article I will describe only my experience.
⠀⠀⠀⠀How already mentioned, there are two ways to twist the tubes of paper. The first is to twist them by weight. In old master classes, you can still find this method mainly. The main and perhaps the only advantage of this method is that it is easier to twist the paper tightly, which means it is easier to get a good quality tube.
⠀⠀⠀⠀Ну it is good, it is unfair to say that this is the only plus of the method. It has one more thing: its relative mobility and independence from these tables of yours. So if you find yourself in a space without tables and flat surfaces, it’s better for you to own this method. Otherwise, you’ll be sitting without tables and without tubes.
⠀⠀⠀⠀As I’ve been doing weaving for about six years, I’ve been doing it for three years. But I’ve come across the fact that this method has a speed limit. I was able to make barely more than two hundred and fifty tubes per hour, but I couldn’t speed up any more.
⠀⠀⠀⠀I was interested in the second method: twisting the tubes on the surface. And then I learned how to spin on the table for a long time. I didn’t get the same quality right away. But the speed immediately increased to three hundred tubes per hour and it was not the limit. I knew that some craftswomen spin much faster. But I couldn’t catch up with them for long.
I still can’t boast of record speed. If you spin a few hours in a row, you get on average four hundred – four hundred and twenty tubes per hour. Of course, if you measure a shorter period, then a successful combination of circumstances can get a larger and more impressive figure, but the “cruising speed” is exactly the same.
⠀⠀⠀⠀For me the plus was that when I was spinning on the table I lost the joint pain I encountered when spinning on weight. I had a case of spinning tubes for ten consecutive working hours with minimal breaks and no joint pain. While spinning by weight, I could spin for at most five hours without breaking off. After that, my hands were very sore for a long time, so it was impossible to work without rest.
⠀⠀⠀⠀One positive thing about spinning on the table is that it makes it much easier to control the angle of the needle. And this is very important, when the angle of the needle is the same in all the tubes, then the twists and turns lie the same.
In this topic it is impossible not to mention this “technological” method, namely the twisting of tubes on the machine. “Machine tool” sounds impressive, but in fact it is a spiked shuropot, in the most advanced versions with a pedal from the sewing machine and a torsional surface.
⠀⠀⠀⠀The experience of twisting paper tubes with a spiker is not so good: it is noisy, not mobile and slow. And if the first two points are logical, then the last one is amazing, because the whole idea is to speed up the process as much as possible. But, alas, with my hands I twist much faster, and therefore the need for the machine in the form in which it exists for me is absent. And known to me cases of twisting on the screwdriver is either slower than the speed of twisting by hand, or faster, but with very low quality tubes. But despite all this, I think that the machines are a promising thing and you can not discount them. Maybe one day somebody will come up with a way to make a machine that turns quickly and with high quality, but for now I have my hands and my favorite piece of plywood, so I will wait and twist, twist and wait.
⠀⠀⠀⠀I have made a choice between these ways for a long time and, except on trips, I don’t twist on weight anymore and I don’t poison my neighbors’ and family’s lives with a noisy tool. I advise you to try both methods and shuropovert and choose the best one for you. Despite the fact that I have written a lot about speed – it is not the most important thing. The most important thing is the quality of the tubes; focus on it and choose the way you twist from it.