Spindle whorl In Modern pewter/Britannia metal

(Tiranti's No 2 Lead free)

25mm dia. x 8mm thick, 8mm id. hole. 14.8g.

Needs to be cast in Pure lead for the weight, and even so, will probably be a bit too light.

Next one needs to be thicker, slightly bigger dia.

All in all though, very quick & simple to make. 

Took 2 hrs, working in very soft soapstone.

Bore the hole for the spindle blank first,

then cut your stone in half perpendicular to the spindle shaft which you can leave in the stone as a Reference, if you don't get it bored perfectly square.

A drill press would take care of this, but hand tools may leave you with a slightly off-kilter hole. My first attempt was, as I jumped in with too big a bit. next I used a succession of bits, starting with a 3mm pilot hole, then working through my bits increasing .5mm at a time till I reached 8mm. I used an 8mm hole as that was the diameter of the dowel I had immediately to hand. Most period examples seem to be in the 9.5mm range ±0.8mm (From a non rigorous skim of a dozen or so records on https://finds.org.uk/database)

non matching detail on the two sides, this seems to be a fairly common feature.

Very lightly Charring your wooden former before you begin will allow you to insert and extract it more easily. And when casting, Pour, Extract former, then open mould, to minimise damage to the mould.

i still need to fiddle with the gate a bit, to eliminate some slight air cavitation, but seeing as the whole thing should be bigger, I may just wait till version II