Spinnits

[Bob Rochon]

Good evening all,

I posted about this on Letterville and didn't get many responses. I see there are 3 different styles available.

2 in aluminum, solid and hollow, and one in plastic. I am leaning towards the plastic ones for they come assembled with a nice semi domed foam top under the velvet, but what I am interested in those who have them and use them. Which ones do you have and why?

I see the hollow ones have to be filled, is it hard to figure out how much to fill them? and what kind of foam do you use?

[Danny Baronian]

Bob,

the photo is the work of David Trujillo (spl?) taken at this years Memorial Conclave. The spinner he used was plastic, not hollow, 3" in diameter, about 2 1/2" long with a large O ring holding a piece of velvet over the surface. Underneath the velvet was cotton that doomed the surface. I believe David bought it through Esoteric where he worked for many years.

The one I use is 1 1/2" in diameter, but the larger size felt better and seemed to produced a better pattern.

Check out Sign Business magazine. I believe in the last 6 months David McDonald wrote an article of a fire engine being stripped and engine turned, with photos of the spinner used and completed pictures of the fire truck; the guy weilding the gold and spinnit was Greg Heger (I think).

[Doug Bernhardt]

Hi...mine is a home made version from about 10 years or so back. Is a thimble with a stove bolt through it....foam rubber from a sft sponge attached to the end and jewellers velvet over all that. Have made quite a few others over the years, of different sizes and needing different effects and in the same way basically. Hegers spinits are quite large and he off-sets them on the gilding area to get that jewel like effect...and yuppers danny...that's the guy in Dave McDonalds article in SB some months back...good luck and have fun with this...also to add Dave T's are off the shelf from Sepp leaf

[Doug Fielder]

Hey there, mine is from QH & F down in the Carolinas, it is alright, but I ususally custom make mine per job. The QHF one is a piece of solid plastic stock lathed and with a steel pole sticking out the rear. The felt end has some sort of foam rubber that looks like it was carved to make it rounded and some fine black felt covering it held on with a rubber o ring. All that for $25! The ones I make are on wooden dowels with some non curved low density foam rubber covered with a short nap felt I picked up at the ambulance place I used to work at. They work fine. All the materials are cheap and the construction is so simple. Make your own and have fun. I would suggest that when you use the wooden dowel, that you put a nail in the end first, so you can use it with your drill, or one of those universal fittings for most cordless drivers/drills.
A cool trick I learned from Bill Bergen is burnishing through a template, he did a chevy emblem, so I took it 1 step further and used my spinnit through an iron cross template on palladium leaf stripes on a cycle tank recently, really cool trick!

[Mike Jackson]

I'll throw in a few extra 2 cents to the topic.

In the video, Steven Parrish was using a single large dry chamois to spin the large letters. I didn't see any sort of spinnits in his kits. You can use a clean dry chamois and spin with just the end of your finger for a small circular pattern.

We bought a set of three spinnits a long time ago and have served us well. Seems like I bought them from Quill Hair and Ferrule, with a clear plex circle and a 1/4" mandrel, covered with a piece of foam and topped with a piece of green velvet. They would be easy to make, especially with a CNC router to make it perfect.

Lastly, we normally just spun the mandrel between our fingers to create the pattern. Some of the fire engine decorators use a spinnit in a Dremmel tool, but of course, you have to know the size is dry and cured before using it. Lots of tests would be necessary, otherwise you can burn the gold, smear wet size, or a expose host of other problems.

Mike Jackson