Here is the marudai (kumihimo stand) that lithicbeads made for me. The legs are just dowels. He bought a nice piece of wood for the top, drilled hole in the middle, then rasped and filed it until it was a good size. He made it round, rasped and filed down the outside edge, and that 's the top. Much less expensive than buying one, and a joy to use remembering the love that went into it.
I use old plastic film canisters for bobbins, wrapped in tape to keep the thread from slipping off. I fill them with washers and coins, with cotton balls to keep the washers/coins from sliding around. Then I can change the weight of the bobbins to fit the project. The wooden bobbins that were commercially available used lead for weight, which we didn't want to use so chose this less toxic set-up.
I made a simple counterweight bag, which is the extent of my sewing abilities. It likewise holds washers and coins.
The set-up in this picture is 16 bobbins. The last picture shows the resulting braid, with my "birthday bead" with its square hole complements of lithicbeads.
