When Angel found me a bag of fiber I started looking into spindles. I liked the idea of a Turkish Spindle, but found there weren't any good patterns available online for 3D printing them... so I whipped this up in OpenSCAD. I've been spinning for several weeks now and it works great!
The spindle prints as two pieces that slide together, with a hole in the center for a pencil or chopstick (the size and shape of the hole can be tweaked in the SCAD file; pencil is the default). I recommend using a pencil or other non-round shaft; the round chopstick tends to slip after a while.
Once it's printed, put it together and start spinning! (I learned from YouTube videos like this one - it's pretty straightforward once you get the hang of it.)
Downloads:
- OpenSCAD file for editing
- STL file for importing into your favorite slicer
- Thingiverse page where you can use the "customizer" webapp to generate an STL file with custom parameters
Note from January 2021: I've spun several skeins on these in the past few years and they continue to work well!