Betrayal: the story of a duck and a wheel

I would like to introduce you to someone. This is my once ever faithful sheep duck. My sister decorates her bathroom with seasonal duckies, and I fell in love with this one. So he came to be my wheel guard, and dutifully sat on my Ashford, guarding it from any harm. That is until one day, my partner stole my sheep duck away. You will notice that currently he resides not on a wheel, but on a monitor. His lack of attention to duty ended up resulting in tragedy, for without him on guard terrible things could happen.
Woe that I did not steal him back right away, because what happens next is not for the faint of heart. Right before thanksgiving I was finally getting around to plying 2 bobbins of the roving shown in this previous post. A little way into the second skein I went to loosen the tension on the brake when I felt the crack.
Lucy at Mind's Eye Yarns confirmed the problem last week. The dowel-like part has cracked inside. The cure is fairly severe. Salvbard is going to bore out the piece that is in there, using a slightly smaller drill bit so that he can pull out the piece. Then we will have to replace the cracked piece.

Unfortunately due to a 2 week business trip to China and then the holidays, he will not be able to work on this right away. That means no spinning for me in less than a month.