It’s a new wheel!
Finally, I’ve gotten ahold of my Louet Victoria. There’s been a bit of a clamor for more information on this wheel, so I thought I’d publish a little mini-review. First let’s look at the wheel itself:

[photopress:vic_012.jpg,full,pp_image]

Weight: 6.5 lbs without the bag, quite a bit more with it (more on that later)
Folded size: 5-3/8″ x 11-7/8″ x 18-3/4″
Available in oak or beech
Wheel: 14″ diameter
Tension: Scotch tension, single drive
Orifice: 23.5″ high, 3/8″ wide, and angled up
Treadle: double, but not a true DT for those of you who are sticklers for that sort of thing (only one footman)
Ratios: 6, 9 and 13 to 1. (High speed flyer will be released in 2007.)
Bobbins: 3 bobbins, 4 oz. capacity, wood ends and plastic core

Yes, it really is wee. In fact it’s incredibly freaking small. Here’s a picture of it next to the Ashford Traveller, a small wheel in and of itself:

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They aren’t kidding when they say the wheel itself weighs 6.5 lbs. (It’s a different ball of cheese when you get to the bag, but we’ll cover that in a minute.) And folded, it is indeed quite compact. I thought that this might prove to be a problem, particularly the height, but it’s worked out just fine - the orifice is angled upwards so you don’t really need to hunch over it while you spin. I have been practicing spinning while leaning back on our oversized couch with my very best slump, and it’s working fine that way.

It folds up fairly quickly, and the design is clever.

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The center post folds, and you remove the flyer and just stick it in a slot in the base. [photopress:vic6.jpg,full,pp_image]

The wooden footman has a small piece of plastic at the end that attaches to a metal disc in the center of the wheel, which you attach or detach every time you fold or unfold the wheel.

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I was mildly concerned with the plastic piece, which doesn’t seem particularly sturdy - I would have been happier with a wood or metal attachment - but it does attach firmly, after some finagling. (This has the potential to be a finger-pincher, but that’s such a small concern I think, unless you’re teaching the very wee to spin.) To set up the wheel, you simply lift the center post, attach the footman, and place the flyer in position (it attaches with a metal slot.) It takes only a few seconds to set up and break down, and the movement is perfectly smooth. The wheel is also easy to pick up and carry, either by the center post or by a small leather loop above the flyer.

Overall I would declare the Victoria to be a very sturdy little wheel. The wood is beautiful and clearly sturdy (I got the oak model, which is quite handsome, because I’m not a blond wood person; this has by far been the more popular color in the store, but the beech is nice too.) In general the construction seems good and solid. If I accidentally kicked this wheel, I wouldn’t freak out. The flyer gave me pause at first, as it simply slides into a hole in the center post - you can sort of hear a click when it’s in place, but there’s no locking mechanism to speak of - but I think it just takes a minute of getting used to. On my first try with the wheel I managed to yank the flyer right off while spinning, but as soon as I got the hang of the wheel (in a few minutes) it never happened again.

As to performance: again, overall I think it’s a very nice wheel. To test it, I spun and plied 4 ounces of Shetland into a 14 wpi sport weight 2-ply, and I spun up small samples of BFL in varying weights. The good news: this is a surprisingly responsive wheel. It spins very nicely at any weight from thin singles for fingering weight to chunky yarn. One thing I did notice is that the tension is quite a bit more finicky than the Ashford Traveller. I found that it was a little more difficult (but not annoyingly so) to adjust the tension properly once the bobbin started to approach full capacity. The treadling is very smooth and there is no wobble (although it did have a tiny bit of a rocking action because of the highly uneven wood floors in our ancient house - adjustable feet would be really nice, but I don’t know of any wheel that offers those.) The wheel is reasonably quiet, a nice change from the Ashford Traveller. It purports to be an “oil-less wheel”, but the treadles and the hole for the flyer both needed a little oil to stop a bit of mouse-like squeaking at first. Since oiling with just one or two drops in each spot, it’s been nearly silent.

The Victoria comes with a carry bag that can be worn as a backpack, over the shoulder, or in the hand. Herein lies my only serious complaint about the wheel: that bag just sucks. And I mean it - it really, really sucks. I was expecting a sturdy padded bag that was good for travel. I was disappointed to discover that the Victoria’s bag is made of cheap nylon which in some places had already begun to fray, with no padding whatsoever. Instead of a soft pad, the back of the bag (which also serves as the back of the backpack) contains a cheap piece of 1/8″ fiberboard, which in my case was already warped. Similarly the “lazy kate” is another flimsy piece of fiberboard sort of stuffed into the bag. There are two straps with click-lock closures, but they’re barely long enough to get around the wheel, and if you don’t have it just so, they’re too short to close. In short the bag is a total PITA. The wheel is so good, however, that this is a minor consideration - given the price of the bag (free with the wheel) i don’t feel particularly picky, but if I’d paid anything extra for it, I’d be calling Louet and bitching right now. The bag is supposed to be extra after the first shipment, and unless it’s vastly improved, if you were paying for it, I’d skip it and get one made by the Bag Lady for the same sort of price. I’ll probably make my own, or at least sew a padded insert to replace the fiberboard in mine.

These are all just quibbles with what amounts to a fabulous wheel. I’d recommend it very highly - the bottom line is that if you want the lightest of all possible wheels, and if you care about sturdy construction and responsive spinning, then the Victoria is a good buy.

More as I actually get to spin a bit more on it!…