More Treadle Tie Ups for the Big Loom

View from under the BIG floor loom.  

 

 

This is the tie ups as listed in the pattern.  All those black squares are to be connected to a treadle. 

Then I realized, the treadle tie-ups for this project will be much more complicated than anything I've done before.  By my calculations, I will need 43 tie-ups, and I only have 24 chains-S biners and cotter pins on the loom at present.   Even if I flip the treadling map in the pattern, I would still need 37 chains, so why not just go for the 43?  It means a trip to the local hardware store for some additional supplies.

My Dear Husband volunteered to get under the loom and help get that set up -- That will be for next weekend, which will give me plenty of time to think things through ...

We stopped at the local hardware store for some supplies:

 

Plumber's Chain -- We needed about 12 ft, and that is exactly what they had left on the roll, at $2.39 per foot.  I know, some people use the nylon heddle chord, but I think they must have much lighter looms.  Kessenichs are sturdy and solid.  Plus, that white heddle chord looks fragile, like it would easily shred.   And it's not available at my local hardware store.   Someday this might become too heavy for me to treadle, but not yet.  Plumber's chain is native to this loom.  That's what it came with, and that's what they were using when it was made n the mid 1960s, so that's what I'm going with ...

 

S-Biners for attaching the chain to the treadles.

 

Cotter Pins that will be bent and shaped to attach the chains to the lams.  Again, there may be other solutions, but this is what was on the loom to start with.

 

This is the unit I had to build 24 more of. 

 

First, I cut the chains to length and attached the S-Biners.  

My husband shaped the cotter pins -- I'm not sure what dark magic he performed in his basement workshop,  but when he emerged, they were shaped and fit perfectly.

  

 Here are the NEW completed tie up chains, ready to be installed.

Now to get to work under the loom!

 

First I used the 24 existing chains, S-Biners, and cotter pins to tie up the treadles from right to left.  When I ran out of the supplies, I used the new stuff.

Pro Tips: 

 

• I numbered the lams so it would be easy to tell them apart.

 

• I used 2 blocks of wood (upper left in photo above) to separate the lams from the shafts, so I could easily work on threading the chains and securing them without needing extra hands to hold them down.
• Prepare the cotter pins ahead of time. 
• Drop the chains down from the top instead of trying to feed them up from the bottom (as I've been doing for the last 10 years).

 All done!