Wanted to know how much faster spinning on my wheel is compared to spinning on a supported spindle--specifically, I wanted to compare the yardage I could produce on each tool within a given amount of time. I chose to use my russian supported spindle because it was next to me and empty, and spun on a 13.5:1 drive ratio (the medium whorl) since thats what my wheel was already set to (and to be fair, i rarely use another ratio). I spun some nice gray roving because i didnt want to use hand prepped fiber for it.

The experiment was thus: I set up my spindle/wheel (attaching fiber and spinning just enough to get started, then marked my place with some scrap fiber), set a timer for 20 minutes, and spun continuously until the timer ran out. I chose not to include the set up in my timing because that only happens at the beginning, and in a test this short i was pretty sure it would skew the results a little. I also never paused the timer when the fiber broke and i had to reattach it, since that can happen repeatedly while spinning and realistically does affect how fast one can spin.

After 40 minutes of spinning, i had these two singles, shown on the bobbin/spindle and then skeined up.

No surprise there--obviously i spun more on the wheel. The pictures are actually pretty deceptive though, since i was not aiming for a particular weight and just spun what came naturally. On the wheel its much much thicker than on a supported spindle--a heavy fingering weight singles compared maybe a heavy cobweb singles. But the purpose of this experiment was to see the yardage specifically, and--

On my wheel, I spun 54 yards/49.3 meters in twenty minutes

On my spindle, I spun 17 yards/15.5 meters in twenty minutes

Which is just over 3 times faster on my wheel. I'm actually pretty shocked by that--I was predicting AT LEAST 5 times faster on my wheel, and I honestly wouldnt have been surprised if it was closer to 10. But nope, a measly 3.

Which is pretty cool to know. Before this experiment, if I had to spin something on a deadline, I would always have picked my wheel to spin it on. But now im actually thinking it may be a draw, maybe weighted just slightly in favor of the spindle for a few reasons--i have limited ability to spin on my wheel since it's more painful by far, but also my spindles are way more portable. So if, for some reason, i had to spin a hat's worth of laceweight singles ASAP, doing it on spindles that i can use in the car/on the train, at work, in bed, etc, would probably be a more efficient way of doing it than sitting at my wheel for two hours, ending up in quite a bit of pain and potentially triggering a flare up.

The chief slowdown of the spindles is the logistics of the temporary cop, since it means that for every length of yarn you produce, you are winding it by hand three times--the first time onto the temporary cop, the second time onto your hand once the temporary cop is full, and then the third time onto the actual cop at the base/middle of the spindle. This is kinda unavoidable--you dont need a temporary cop for drop spindles, for example, because youre spinning much longer lengths of yarn at a time, so for each time that you have to wind it up the spindle stick to get to the tip, youve spun at least an armspan of yarn, potentially up to 2. Whereas on a supported spindle, much less (anywhere between 3 inches/7.5 cm to 12 inches /30.5 cm depending on what I'm spinning). I dont know exactly how much slower it is to forego a temporary cop, but i highly suspect its far more than the slowdown of winding thrice. Maybe ill check at some point, but i dont really want to (ive tried it, and its extremely tedious).

Anyway, suprising but heartening results ! Would be very interested to hear the results of others if anyone else wanted to give it a go for their own edification. (Im actually really curious what other spinners speed is ! And would be interested to hear drop spindle or other hand spindle speeds even without a comparison to another tool !)