Lesson Learned: Re-winding the Sectional Warp

29 sections re-wound on in flat ribbons -- like they should have been done the first time.  Look at the nice flat ribbons on the bottom of the warp beam.

But let me back up a bit ...

I've been watching The Vampire Lestat tv series on AMC.   One of the big themes is "The Failures."  Here's mine -- I was so excited to finally have the sectional warp and the spool rack and the tension box, that I rolled on the warp without really thinking about it ... It was supposed to be so easy and hassle free, right?

 Badly wound on.  The tell-tale sign is the slants at the top and bottom of the rounds.

Well, most of the sections wound on unevenly -- not as beautiful flat ribbons, but lop-sided and sloping, which means the differentials over 16 yards are going to cause mongo tension problems when it comes to actually weaving. 

So I had to pull them off one section at a time and re-wind them more evenly.  How did I do it?

The first section, I thought I could pull it off in a straight run as if direct warping.  But that got so hopelessly tangled, that I had to cut it off and start over.  Here's the method that finally worked:

 

To pull it off, I ran it through the tension box again, in an effort to maintain nice even tension, and keep  the separate strands straight and even, and prevent tanlging.

 

Wound the warp onto a large rag shuttle, adding choke ties every 18 inches (or so).

 Combed out the extra so that it ran off the end, where I could cut the ends even again.   I literally used a cheap black hair comb for this task.

 

 

This photo shows  the difference in the length of the strings in the same section wound on with that that slant.  Quite a difference from the short end to the long end.  Better to fix it now, than while trying to weave! 

And wound it back on -- again through the tension box.  This time, I made sure it wound on flat and even.  Usually that meant making sure the tension box was aimed at the middle of the section.   Now that I know I need to watch out for this, I will NEVER make this mistake again!

Here I thought this sectional warp set-up was going to be such a time saver!  Ha--I wasted about 3x as many hours to get this warp wound on properly.  It took about 30 hours to re-wind all the sections manually.  Better to deal with it now than to be so frustrated when it comes to weaving.  Someday, it will be a huge asset, but for now, I am still learning.  Anything worth doing, is worth doing badly at first!

Next to my beloved Lestat on learning from failure, I prefer Nelson Mandela's quote about reframing defeat: "I never lose.  I either win, or I learn something."   As I said, I will NEVER make this mistake again!   

Lesson Learned!