This morning there was a flurry of emails concerning an unannounced antiques auction in Portsmouth, NH. The person who emailed several fiber lists about this auction also took some pictures of some of the equipment. After tracking down DH and the boy (who was at the school playground playing with his RC car), we took off for Portsmouth, which is about an hour away.

There was a wide variety of goods up for auction, including some furniture, kitchen goods, etc. There were also several great wheels (also known as walking wheels), some of them in pretty nice shape. At the end, I paid $60 and came home with this:



Sorry for the lousy picture; it's very cloudy, and it was hard to find somewhere to put this where I had room to take a picture.

Overall, the wheel is in very good condition, and the drive wheel itself looks quite good. (Haven't had a chance to see whether it will hold a drive band, though.) It has what I believe is called a bat's head (no Minor's head, or place for a Minor's head, on this one). The spindle is there, but it needs new corn husk bearings - the original braided corn husk bearings are there, but unusable. And it has the initials F.W. on the table. I need to go through my spinning wheel books and see if I can find any information on this wheel.

For now, it's going to go up in my bedroom - the only place I can think of where it'll fit. But geez, sixty dollars!