On 26 Apr 2007 01:58:08 -0700, Vintage Purls
wrote:

Does it literally fray till it snaps? I don't get it - what could it
be wearing on?
Let us know how the new one goes.

The OEM drive cord was some horrid jute crap about the diameter of
Cat5 cable and it shed like nuts just being handled so I didn't even
bother with it. The knot would have been horrendous anyhow and a
lap-splice not much better.

The cotton drivebands I tried literally disintegrated: I'd be spinning
merrily along and suddenly my drive band would fly off in pieces.

Hemp cord (bought at the craft store) fared not much better: It
shredded and shed, and would eventually experience differential slip
along it's length in that where it was shredding the worst different
overlapping fibers within the cord would slip over each other in
opposite directions. Quite frustrating the first couple of times it
happened, as I didn't know it was happening and I kept cranking out
the mother, which made the problem worse, ad naus.

Long-line wet-spun linen fared better than either hemp or cotton, but
only barely. The linen wore away pretty evenly along it's entire
length and deposited a nice runnel of powdered flax fiber on the
bench. I could get 8-10 hours of spin time off one driveband though,
versus a couple of hours from hemp or about 30 minutes from cotton.

So far I have about 3 hours on the silk driveband with no apparent
wear. There's a bit of fuzzing on the knot -- I didn't do a
lap-splice this time as I wanted to see how the silk holds up before I
do any join more time-consuming than a square knot). Silk does appear
to be promising, however.

The distributor's solution was for me to 1. sand the wheel rim to
remove rough spots and 2. try different materials. I had done both of
these prior to asking for guidance from the distributor so they've
basically blown me off.

At any rate, the girl is spinning again, and I'm about to pull another
shot of espresso and lug her out to the patio for some quality outdoor
time.