Looming Problems

Having reviewed several Internet videos on warping looms, I made a raddle for Susie’s Schacht Baby Wolf (26” 8-shaft) loom. The primary board is oak because that’s what they sell in the local lumber store. The pegs could have been just nails, but I wanted something a bit better for baby’s first raddle, so I turned wooden pegs one at a time on a lathe and stained the center peg black. The Baby Wolf requires a different raddle mount than most looms because the back beam is angled. On most looms, the raddle simply sits on the back beam and is tied on with string. The Baby Wolf’s back beam is angled, so there is no flat and level surface. I found some scraps of maple in my woodpile and made a couple of brackets so the raddle simply slips onto the back beam.

I also wanted to be able to use the raddle on the front beam (I’m not sure why, but why not?) The front beam is wider than the back beam but there is a stiffener beneath it that the raddle brackets must straddle. This took careful measurements and some time with a power sander after assembly, but the raddle is now ambidextrous so to speak.

I actually enjoyed learning how to transfer the warp and the use of lease sticks. I may actually enjoy warping more than weaving.

Susie’s Baby Wolf loom is finally warped with some stout cotton and her project is begun at last. I had been putting things off because I had promised to warp her loom before I did anything else. We have been learning a few things with every step. I finally learned how to use a warping board, lease sticks and a raddle.

My LeClerc Artisat (36” 4-shaft) loom is finally up and running. Now that Susie’s loom is taking weft, I was free to start a project I have wanted to do for quite some time. I bought the loom off Craig’s List before Christmas from a nice lady who is wanting to focus more energy on pottery. Manufactured in 1977, it was originally owned by a local community college and I think they just gave it to the woman I purchased it from. It was rickety when I picked it up, but all the primary pieces were there. It came with the deluxe weaving bench and even a 20” bekka rigid heddle loom thrown in. The rickety feel of the loom was overcome by simply going around tightening all the screws up. There were a few wing-nuts missing or replaced over the years with regular nuts. The cloth beam has a canvas apron which has a small tear on one side and I will have to sew a patch on that before warping a full-width piece.

I got the loom home and it sat for over a month because of other commitments. There were only a few heddles with the loom when I got it, so I have ordered a full set of 500 inserted eye heddles from the LeClerc factory along with a replacement warp beam crank lever. All together, the LeClerc, bench and little rigid heddle loom have now cost me about what the bench itself sells for in the catalog.

Not wanting to wait for all the parts to come in, I have tied on a narrow warp to make some scarves for motorcycling. These need to be dense to cut the wind, wide enough and long enough to wrap around the bottom of the face as well as the neck and still have enough length to go down over the chest where the zipper always seems to leak chilly air.

I chose nine inches width and the reed is a twelve dent, so that makes 108 strands of warp. I chose to measure eleven yards of length because that is the maximum for my warping board and it allows me to make four scarves seven feet long without having to re-warp. Having discovered how wonderful a proper raddle can be, but not wanting to spend a lot of time on it, I made a very short raddle just long enough for my scarf project by driving eight finish nails into a narrow scrap of wood. I’ll make a better one later.

When my wife first got interested in weaving, I got on eBay and found 18 skeins of 100% wool yarn for something like $15.00, so I bought it thinking I would use it for experimenting if Susie didn’t want it. Half of this yarn is teal and the other half is navy. I chose teal for the warp in my scarves and purchased some grey acrylic for the weft.

While measuring the warp, I went through four skeins of the wool yarn. Each time I came to the end of a skein, I would simply knot on the next skein and continue. The kindly folks at the Facebook group “4-shaft weaving” have been patient in letting me know that I should have run each knot all the way back to the starting peg so my warp would be knot free. I got away with the two knots in the cotton warp for Susie’s baby wolf because it is sturdy and narrower than my warp. We are both using 12 dent reeds and the frizzy wool knots on my warp just don’t pass through very well at all. I have learned a lot about repairing warp threads though.

The heddles were even worse than I expected. I removed the extra heddles and all the flat metal and home brew string heddles. There were enough of the plain wire heddles to do my project, so I went with them. They are such fine wire that I think they are probably very hard on the wool warp and they hardly slide at all along the rails in the shafts. Not having a crank lever for the warp beam might have been a problem since I like a nice tight warp, but the weak yarn and narrow width of my project means I can snug up the warp beam by wrapping my hand around the beam. I also have a ratchet wrench hanging on the drive bolt, but it has not been needed.

Early on, I had to abandon the use of the reed to beat with because of a knot right in the middle of the sweep. I used a tapestry beater I made until I had passed the knot by. By then, the “hourglassing” of my weaving which I had not noticed because there was no reed to go by, had narrowed my nine inch width down to six and a half inches. I know what you must be thinking, but I really didn’t notice it at the time. When I got past the knot, the reed was so much wider than my cloth that it broke another warp just because of the stretching on the sides, so that first seven feet of weaving was beaten with the hand beater.

I left a nice gap between scarves to allow for shortening as I twist the fringe later. Each scarf is started and ended a row of twined weaving. As I twined a row across the end of the first scarf, I discovered that the stretchy wool warp wouldn’t allow me to slide the tightly twined weave down the warps to pack it against the pattern weft, so I ended up pushing it down with the end of the needle I was using to do the twined weave.

To widen my warp for starting the second scarf, I attached my mini-raddle to the front beam and spread the warp across it so that I could make the subsequent scarves the proper width.