The home for wayward wheels

A local spinner found a wheel for sale on Kijiji recently – it was a great price (the people were clearing out Grandma-the-hoarder’s house and wanted it gone ASAP), though it was missing a bobbin and in somewhat questionable condition.
Of course, she couldn’t resist and she bought it. It did, indeed, need a little help. Not a lot, but a little. I offered to do the work for her, and she was happy to take me up on that. It’s a “pay me what you think the job is worth when you see the finished project” kind of deal, and since I enjoy doing the tweaking and I think people who want to spin should be enabled as much as possible within their budgets, this works for both of us.
Here’s the before picture:

Dry, unfinished wood, no bobbin, and a really strange blue tape arrangement for the brake band. Hmm.
Here it is now:

Stained with Watco dark walnut all over, but since there are different woods involved (I think this was a kit wheel of some kind) it came out really varied. It’s quite pretty, actually.

There is a proper brake band (leather, not blue fabric tape), the footman is tied on with a leather shoelace, and there’s a drive band (blue cotton warp thread). The loose axle has been fixed firmly in place, and the whole thing has been stained and waxed, though it should probably get a bit more wax to bring out the shine.
It’ll go back home later in the week.
Getting that all finished up was a good day’s work for me, now I’m going back to knitting.