Winding on a New Warp for 8-Shaft Towels

I spent the last few weeks setting up the BIG loom for a new project: 8-shaft towels.  It's a kit, so a good one to practice getting used to the 8-shaft loom.  So farin the last 2 years, I've only used 4 shafts on her, since the bigger size was enough to manage up until now.  Weaving always stretches my brain and capabilities!

Last week, I sleyed the reed, and started threading heddles.  It's been going faster than I thought it would, and I managed to thread over 700 heddles in just a few days.  I would do them in sets of 90-ish and then take a break before my back gave out.  This pattern is pretty straight forward threading in a zig-zag pattern of 8 up then 7 back down 1 heddle from each shaft, then repeat.   I never look forward to this part of weaving, but I have made peace with it.  Patience and attention to detail ...

 

I invented a new tool to help with threading heddles:  I took a scrappy strip of cloth and tied some coins into the ends for weights.  

 

This serves to separate the bulk of the heddles from the set I was currently threading.  It worked like 2 charms!  On my smaller loom, I used 2 drawer pulls because they fit nicely over the 4 shafts, but they are  not wide enough to use with 8 shafts.  Hence this new tool.  Necessity is the mother of invention!

The 2 new heddle separators in use, and doing a splendid job!

As I was winding on, I realized I couldn't use the treadles with the set-up from the last project to open a common weave shed on all 8 shafts because I only used 4 shafts.  I wanted to set up the tension rods for the winding on ...

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 ...

Once the treadles are set up for this project, I will re-wind the warp using the tension rods.  The first run through served to comb all the warp strings out and straighten out the tangles.   There was so much going on with the first run-through, I forgot to add the paper to separate the warp.  

 

The chaos side.  It looked much worse as I was winding on.  It always amazes me how things mostly straighten out if you've done things right.  I have not tied onto the cloth beam yet, as I'll have to pull it out and re-wind it onto the warp beam next week.