great wheel

plural great wheels

1. A type of spinning wheel with a large drive wheel, turned by hand rather than a treadle.

   Over the room in the inn where he and Boswell sat "a girl was spinning wool with a great wheel, and singing an Erse song."

   1890, George Birkbeck Norman Hill, Footsteps of Dr. Johnson, page 135

   1 more example

   The great wheel does require better fiber preparation than is necessary with a treadle wheel. This is partly because you use only one hand to control the drawing out of the yarn, and also because you cannot draw against the spindle.

   1987, Paula Simmons, Spinning and weaving with wool, published 1977, →ISBN, page 114