Another spinning-related post here: it’s a DIY on how to make a 45 degree angle Lazy Kate! For quite a while now, since I learned of their existence in The Intentional Spinner, I have wanted a Lazy Kate on which bobbins of yarn slant at a 45 degree angle. This makes the yarn come off smoothly and prevents the bobbins over-spinning. For non-initiated readers, here are some definitions so you can follow what I’m talking about.

Lazy Kate: A Lazy Kate (love the name) is a wooden stand that you put bobbins of yarn on so that they will unwind as you ply the yarns together.

Bobbin: A bobbin is the thing that newly-spun yarn is wound around on a spinning wheel. It is essentially a large wooden spool, and you can think of the yarn is the thread.

I went crazy with online buying recently and on the same day that I bought my Craftsy course from the last post, I bought three bobbins online. I previously only owned three bobbins, so the most plys I could spin were 2-ply, or 3-ply if I use Navajo plying. My wheel is an Ashford Traditional single-drive wheel, so I bought the Ashford standard bobbins, from the eBay seller ropes546, who is excellent and even sent with my bobbins a copy of a spinning magazine called The Wheel. I bought unstained ones as they’d be about $5 more expensive each if I were going to buy them lacquered. So, I thought, I’m going to have to buy stain and/or varnish for these bobbins anyway, so I may as well make my own 45 degree angle Lazy Kate and use up the whole pot (actually, I used barely any of the pot).

As I am so nice, I’ve decided to give you a little step-by-step tutorial on how to make a 45 Degree angle Lazy Kate like mine.

How to Make Your Lazy Kate

You will Need

Materials (and approximate cost):

Wooden door plaque about 30cm long, 8-10cm high and at least 1cm thick….$3
90cm length of dowel, 0.6cm in diameter…$2
Wood stain. I used Intergrain NaturalStain in Merbau and I bought a sample pot…$10
Two wooden craft letter “V”s about 5cm high (I searched high and low for suitable 45 degree angled triangles of wood. I wasn’t going to faff around with a saw trying to cut a piece of wood at an angle. I ended up finding these “V”s at Cheap as Chips and when I held two together I found that they made a 90 degree angle and therefore individually were 45 degrees. Bingo. They are made of kind of pulped up wood, like super-duper-thick-and-dense cardboard, making them easy to sand down. The plaque is made of similar material)…$2

Estimated cost of materials: $17

Images of materials used in construction of Lazy Kate

A picture of some of the supplies you will need. Dog is optional.

Tools:

Saw
Sandpaper (I like a sheet rather than a block so you can tear it up to do the fiddly bits.)
Power drill
0.6cm/quarter-inch-ish drill bit (I’ll tell you a secret: I knew my dowel was 0.6cm across so I was looking for a drill bit (that I already owned) that was equal to or slightly larger than this size. The best I could find was 7/32 of an inch. “That’s nearly 0.6cm,” I said to myself, little realising that 7/32 of an inch is slightly less than, not slightly more than, 0.6cm. Doiiiii. I ended up finding a screwdriver that was exactly 0.6cm across and expanding my already-drilled holes by forcing the screwdriver through them. It worked well, as the dowels fitted in very snugly and didn’t need to be glued in. Not gluing them in will make them easier to replace).
Strong adhesive. I used Parfix Fast Grip (in a much smaller tube than the pot shown). I used the wet adhesive instructions rather than the contact adhesive instructions. Liquid Nails would also work.
Paint brush to apply the wood stain
Newspaper for the messy work
Small flat piece of rigid plastic to stir wood stain.
Pencil
Ruler
Eraser

What to Do

Mark off three 20cm lengths on your dowel. Save the rest in case you need to replace a dowel later on.
Cut these three lengths from the dowel. Sand down the ends. I sanded one end round and one end flat. See Fig 1.

Fig 1. How I sanded my dowels (two rounded and one flat end)
Take the wooden plaque. Sand off any rough bits. Measure and mark a line running along the middle of the plaque along its length. See Fig 2.
Mark three points evenly spaced along this line. These will be where you will drill holes for the dowels. My plaque was about 30cm long. I put the two end holes about 4cm from the edges and the middle one equally distanced between these two. See Fig 3.

Fig 2. Centre line running the length of the plaque
Taking your power drill (with correctly-sized drill bit), drill holes in each of these three marks. Sand off any rough bits. Erase pencil marks.
Insert dowels into holes. Have the flat end of each dowel flush with the back of the plaque, with the rounded end sticking out. Because my holes were the exact same size as the dowels, I did not need to glue them in. This will also make it easier to replace them if need be. If your holes are slightly larger than your dowels, you may need to use your strong adhesive to secure the dowels in place. Sand off the back of the plaque where the dowels poke out to make it smooth.

Fig 3. Close-up of mark for drill holes
Saw outer serifs off letter “V”s. Sand them down so that the serif stubs are flush with the rest of the outside of the “V”.
Turn plaque over so you are looking at the back of it. Mark two lines on either side of the plaque. This is where the “V”s will be placed. It doesn’t matter too much how far apart they are, just as long as they are parallel and when attached make the Lazy Kate stand sturdily and at a 45-degree angle. You figure it out. See Fig 4.

Fig 4. Placement of letter “V”s
Glue letter “V”s to Lazy Kate along these points with heavy-duty adhesive. As well as putting glue on the surfaces touching each other, I ran a line of glue down the sides of each “V” once it was stuck on, to reinforce them. Erase pencil marks. Allow to dry.
Stain Lazy Kate according to instructions. Allow to dry. Enjoy. See Figs 5. and 6.