A refinement of a spinning wheel that he made for his wife, Beth, while living aboard their sailboat, the shoe-box sized machines impressed everyone who saw them at the Hansens’ Chimacum area home during the Jefferson County Farm Tour in September.
As a result, Hansen sold both e-spinners, as electric spinning machines are called.
Then, through the magic of the Internet, more customers beat a path to his Web site.
“I thought that I would make 10 to 15 a year and that it would be a craft project,” Hansen said.
“The demand is considerably higher than that.”
Now, he is getting inquires from as far away as Sweden for the minispinner, as Hansen calls it, and expects more.
A business acquaintance took Hansen’s e-spinner to Spin-Off Autumn Retreat, a spin-in in Sunriver, Ore., this past weekend, where it created a fair amount of buzz, Hansen was told.
Ground floor
That means that things will be buzzing in his workshop, which takes up the entire ground floor of the home overlooking Beaver Valley that he and Beth built themselves.
“I can make 40 to 50 e-spinners at once,” Hansen said. “All the parts are interchangeable.”
Since Hansen went into production in October, he has sold more than a dozen machines, he said, including five to people who heard about them at the Duchess County Sheep and Wool Festival in Rhinebeck, N.Y.
On Sunday, Bryan Johnson, who sells hand-spun yarn at The Artful Ewe in Port Gamble, drove up from Poulsbo to pick up an e-spinner, which he first saw at the Jefferson County Farm Tour, receiving a quick lesson before settling down to test it.
“This is the essence of a spinning wheel,” Johnson said, as he spun pieces of fiber together with ribbon onto a core strand.
The e-spinner is his third wheel, Johnson said, but it won’t be ignored. The others are a full-size treadle wheel and a travel-sized-model.
Johnson said he bought the second wheel to use on his boat but found even the scaled-down version bulky.
“It’s like carrying a cello around,” he said. “That’s the beauty of this — it is the size of a child’s lunchbox with great capability.”
The electric motor eliminates both the treadle and the wheel, reducing the machine to a spindle with a weight of about 4 pounds.
Designed circuit board
A software engineer by profession, Hansen designed the circuit board that controls the motor, which operates by a foot pedal or a hand switch.
Using the foot pedal, the beginning spinner can start off slowly and work up speed with practice. The pedal can be set to run only while held down, Hansen said, or to tap on and off.
The main advantage for both novice and experienced spinners — not having to coordinate hands and feet, or use one hand to restart the wheel in the right direction.
With the e-spinner, the spinner can keep both hands on the drafting, as drawing the fiber to the desired consistency is called.
“You focus on the fiber, not the mechanics,” Johnson said.
While electric spinners commonly have sewing machine motors, Hansen chose to use an almost-silent Swiss-made motor, similar to ones used in NASA’s Mars Rover.
The size of a C-cell battery, it operates on 12 volts, so his e-spinner can be plugged into a car or RV for people who want to ply their craft on the road.
Recline and spin
His e-spinner can be used by people who are unable to use their feet to work the treadle, or who can’t sit upright to use a regular spinning wheel.
“You can sit in a recliner and spin,” Beth Hansen said.
It was during a cruise on their 48-foot sailboat in the South Pacific that Beth discovered that she liked spinning.
Tiring of using a hand spindle, she asked Kevin to use his woodworking, machinist and electronics skills to devise something.
After a description of the e-spinner he built appeared on their sailing blog, it jumped to spinning Web sites, starting a thread on one called Ravelry.
That’s where Amelia Garripoli, a spinning instructor in Port Angeles, saw it. Noticing that the Hansens lived near Chimacum, she decided to come and see it for herself.
“She walked out the door with one,” Hansen said.
Hansen buys the wood — cherry and maple — locally from Edensaw and arranged with manufacturers to order the foot pedals, flywheels and customized circuit boards in small quantities.
He made the decision to sell the machines online only, not wholesale, he said, to keep the cost down for the customer.
The electronics make his e-spinner the most technically sophisticated on the market, Hansen said, while the cost is comparable to buying an entry-level treadle wheel.
He also ships his minispinner at no charge and guarantees them unconditionally.
And despite not being a traditional spinning wheel, Hansen’s e-spinner has the look and feel of a classic, Johnson said.
“There is an esthetic and a balance to it,” Johnson said.
“This is a comfortable thing to work with.”
For more information, go to www.hansencrafts.com or call 360-747-7746.
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Port Townsend/Jefferson County reporter-columnist Jennifer Jackson can be reached at jjackson@olypen.com.
