The Next Step in Weaving Set Up: Threading Heddles

The new project is for a new coverlet -- which should keep me busy for a few months.  I'm retired now, so I am no longer limited to weaving only on Sundays.   Hurray!

This pattern is from the Helen Bress Book #258, but I think I've seen it listed elsewhere as Church Windows (???)  It's an overshot pattern, which means there will be a white tabby between each of the colored yarns in the weft.

There are 3 repeats of this pattern across 28 inches. 

I am planning to do 3 or 4 90-inch long panels that will be sewn together in a final piece big enough for my bed. 

There are so many steps to setting up a loom for weaving.  It can take as long to set up as it does to actually make cloth -- which is the fun part!  But if I want to weave, I've have to make peace with the set-up process.  The set-up is just as much a part of weaving as making the cloth.

 

I threaded all those warp strings through the 681 heddles over 3 days.  It didn't take as long as I thought it would--only about 4-5 hours.  That's a new record for me!  This is the important step that essentially programs the loom to make the design, in combination with treadling.  

After that, it's sleying the reed in the beater bar.  I usually lay it down for this step, which makes it easier on my body.

It looks like I missed a few slots, but I don't think that will be a problem, if the heddles are threaded correctly.  It will just even out as I weave. 

 The next step is to tie onto the front beam.  It went better this time than it's ever gone!  This is usually a very frustrating step in trying to get even tension.  Because I spent the time and effort to correct the winding on step, it helped prevent problems at this step -- proving that it was worth spending the time and effort to make those corrections!  Vindicated!

I tied on each 1-inch bundle with 24 threads--which worked very well! 

I checked both the plain weave sheds, and did not detect ant crossed threads or other problems that can show up at this stage.  Hurray for double-shecking my work as I threaded! 

 

I am using single spun wool yarn (which is traditional for coverlets), sport weight from Maritime Family Fiber in Maine, though this yarn comes from Canada.  This is the teal.  It reads bluer in the photo than it is in real life.

1 4-oz. skein / cake fills 7-1/2 7-inch bobbins for my large boat shuttle. 

1-4-oz skein / ball is 430 yards.  (They come in skeins, which I had to wind into balls.)  I will keep notes on how far a bobbin weaves, and how many bobbins I will need for this project. 

I'll have to do some experimenting before I start in on the coverlet.  I may need to make some adjustments to the treadling, as I am not sure the pattern has accounted for the tabby wefts.  It may be too elongated as written.  That's why I ran some extra yardage for the warp.     I'll save that for tomorrow!  

I am so excited and happy to be this close to weaving again! 

A Few More Adjustments on the "Little" Loom

Uneven lift on the shafts linked to the same treadle.

As I was setting up tie-ups for the treadles on my latest weaving project, I noticed that the shafts were not lifting evenly ...   With 2 shafts per treadle, you want the shafts to raise even with each other, so that the eyes of the heddles are even with each other.  I don't remember this being an issue for my last project on this loom.   ???

 

After I thought about it for a while, I realized I could adjust the chains on the lower shafts.   So I moved the attachment point up 1 link in the chain.  That turned out to be a perfect solution!   Now the shafts are lifting evenly, as they should!

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! 

A Few Small Repairs on the Big Loom

I ran into a snag weaving my test pieces on The Wandering Vine Coverlet last week.  I was just 6 or 7 lines from finishing the 3rd pattern repeat of the Wandering Vine pattern motif when I lost all tension.  I couldn't quite figure out what went wrong, so I went to get my husband.  He figured it out right away ...

When my husband set up the sectional warp beam on The Big Loom, he used the same kind of bolt/screw as on the regular warp beam.  Unfortunately, when I was weaving my test pieces, I managed to sheer it off -- broken in 2 places.    There are tremendous forces at work on a floor loom when weaving!

We stopped at the local hardware store this week in search of a screw / bolt made of a stronger grade metal, but they didn't have anything.  

 

So on to Plan B: Piano wire.  It's not really piano wire, but that's what they call it.  It's carbon steel and much harder than the bolt/screw we had before.  He had to use a blow torch to bend the end, and cut it -- That's how hard it is.

This should hold it.  So far so good!

Slow Going Beaming the Sectional Warp

Winding the sectional warp, one section at a time.

It's been very slow going beaming the sectional warp.  I know there's a learning curve ...  

I found a few videos (Part 1; Part 2) on how to do it with a warping board (I'm using my warping mill instead) one bundle at a time.  I don't have a creel or 24 spools to wind on straight from the spools -- I have considered it, but can't justify the space the extra equipment will take up, or the expense, not being a production weaver.  It takes longer to secure the warp chain than it does to wind a 24-end warp.  It's only 3 trips up-and-down with 4 strings.  

 

This is how I secure the cross at the top.  Red marks the top and green marks the lower.  Same for the cross at the bottom.  This will be important later on when I need to insert the lease sticks at the loom. 

 

These are mostly secured with lark's head knots, because they are secure and easy to remove later. 

 

4 x 1-pound cones of 10/2 American Maid natural cotton for the warp. 

 

Normally I use a counter app on my phone to keep track of how many strings I've run in any given warp.  But my phone kept going to sleep before I ran the 12 yards down and back up to the top of the warping mill.  It took too many taps to wake it up and get back to where I could tap the app to track the strings.  I finally gave up and went with an analogue method [See photo above.].  Tried and true.  This works just fine!

The videos worked well enough for the basics, but there were a few things that didn't work so well for me.  I have a tension box (Thank goodness!).  She combed out the strings -- I found that it was easier to snap them.  I don't have the right comb for the strings I'm working with.

I broke a couple of strings in the first 2 bundles.  The first bundle, the loose and broken strings tangled miserably.   The 2nd one, I decided to put a note on it to add 2 repair strings later to hang off the back -- just like olden days.

After that, I was winding 1 bundle at a time, and then trying to wind it onto the sectional warp.  It took about 1 hour to do a single bundle in the beginning.  At this rate, it's going to take me months just to get the loom set up.  I thought this was supposed to simplify things?  

 

I developed a couple of tricks to help --  The one teacher said she doesn't crochet the warp chains, she just coils them into a bag -- That wasn't really working for me.  I started winding it around a piece of cardboard, then realized that I could use the rag shuttles with this loom, so I've been running the individual 24-end bundles on the warping mill, then pulling them off onto the rag shuttles (from the top down) where they keep nice and stable until I can wind them onto the sectional warp in bundles.

 

This is the very simple cross holder my DH made out of some of the leftover cherry.  Very helpful!

 

Here is the tension box, which works great as long as I remember to thread the strings around the pegs.

I will say that the finished bundles look so nice and neat!  So far, I have 22 bundles on the sectional warp.  Only 15more to go! 

This system should solve some problems with tension and the cigar slopping at the ends ...  I am looking forward to that!

A Few Small Repairs on the New Kessenich 8-Shaft Loom

 

Here she is -- Mary Meigs all waxed, oiled, polished,  and ready to weave! 

This post is about what I did to get her back in shape again.

 

Although most things on the new loom are in amazingly good shape, considering it was made in the 1950s (or so), there are a few things that needed some work ...

I think this decal helps to age the loom to before 1962, since that's when we started using zip codes in the US.  This loom predates zip codes. Which makes it more than 70 years old.

 

The fishing swivels that attach the treadles to the shafts.  Although these are in ok shape (not rusty or corroded), they are tricky to open when you want to change the tie-ups--hard on fingers / hands.  Having the right tool helps (a pair of jewelery pliers), but it would be even better to NOT need a tool at all.  

So we got these little 8-biners that work really well.  Same as on my other 4-shaft Kessenich loom. 

 No special tool needed to switch the tie ups.  These are much easier to manage.

The main thing that needed work is the bumpers under the shafts.  The rubber gasket material (or whatever that was) melted and is sticking to some of the other wooden parts, preventing them from moving freely.  Some of the shafts stick because of it.  Bruce Niemi, who now owns Kessenich Looms advised me to scrape all that old orange stuff off (a putty knife worked well), and replace it with some "closed cell rubber foam used for weatherizing windows.  1 inch wide x 1/2 inch thick.  I ordered this from Amazon, and cut it down to size.

 

This gasket bumper material should NOT be stuck to the wood like this. 

 This is a shot of the lams from underneath.  It was stuck to that surface as well.   Ew!

The old substance is strange -- It's the rusty orange color of plumber's gasket, but dry and brittle, and a little sticky sometimes, too.  Like it melted at some time, and oozed onto other parts.  How in the world did that happen?

 

Here's one of the bars -- there are 4 of them encircling the metal rollers that translate messages from the treadles to making the shafts move up and down.  This is as clean as I could make it.  It's ready for the NEW bumpers.

 

With this photo, I tried to show more of the context for where these bumpers are on the loom.  The lams are currently raised up so I can get in there to work on it.  The frames of the shafts have been removed, again so I can get in there to work on it.  There's another bar underneath those rolling pipes that also needed to be cleaned and scraped. 

 

This is as clean as I could get the lamms. [See photo higher up for the before shot.]

You can see some of the debris I scraped out on the paper underneath the loom that I was using as a drop cloth.

It didn't really take as long as I thought it would.  After I had most of the gunk out, I went over the wood with a little sandpaper to get out the last little bits that were still stuck to the wood. 

Here's a shot of the NEW bumpers, made from Black Adhesive Foam Padding, Closed Cell Foam Sheet 1/2" Thick 6 Inch X 6 Inch Neoprene Rubber Pad Self Stick Anti-Slip Adhesive Anti Vibration Foam Pad (6inX 6inX 1/2in, 8) and cut down to size 6-1/4 inch x 1/2 in thick x 1 inch wide.

The shafts are heavy enough to have made an impression / indentation on the new foam already.   We'll see how it holds up under stress /usage.  I have 8 sheets of it in stock!

Once I got the bumpers cleaned up, the next thing I did was to go over it with Murphy's Oil Soap and a sponge to clean her up.  She wasn't too dirty, but there were some spots that were dusty and linty.  Again -- not bad.  The previous owners took care of her well.

The next step is dust her and polish her up with some Howard's Feed n Wax.  It has a nice orange oil smell to it.  Bruce at Kessenich says to wax all the wooden parts that have the potential to rub together--that includes the frames of the shafts, and the lams (stick tray thingies underneath the shafts) that attach to the treadles.  And the ends of those lams where they nestle into the castle. 

A little oil in the "zerk" holes to lubricate the moving metal parts.  

I also oiled it from inside the castle [Look to the RIGHT side of this photo ...], as I wasn't sure I was pushing the oil nozzle far enough into the hole from the other side.  I may have been just oiling the wood at first.  Either way, I think this oils the ends of the metal pipes that the ropes twist around to raise and lower the shafts.  All the while being careful NOT to get oil on the ropes.

 

It's also important to periodically oil the roller bar (NOT the ropes) at the top of the castle on either end of the shafts.  There's a wooden topper there held by 2 screws, so it's easy to get in there for regular maintenance--which amounts to keeping it well oiled so you don't need additional maintenance.  

On the right side, you can see the tip of the sewing machine oil nozzle I used to apply the oil -- and the spaces the oil should go.

2 of the shafts are a little warped (although you can't really tell in this photo). I thought I would have to lay them out flat with some weights, so that they'll spring back into place.   But after waxing all the wooden parts and oiling the metal moving parts, things were moving much better.  I also tried moving the frames of the shafts around so that they all had a little more room to breath.  That helped, too.  

Also if I move the treadles of the sticking #4 shaft just so, it tends to go back down--if I make the right accommodation.  

It might be the lam that's a little warped, too?  Since all the other shafts I put in that #4 spot also stuck a little, it may not be the shaft after all.  That gasket melty-sticking gasket was holding it in an unnatural position for however long it was misbehaving.

I fixed 1 of the other warped and sticking shafts by changing the tie up.  Turns out the tie-up was chained to a treadle that was just a little too far away.  By changing the tie-up to a hook closer to that lam / shaft, it no longer pulled it towards the one next to it, and they both moved easier after that.  

Hurray for problem-solving!  That's what I love about weaving -- None of this is rocket science.  If you think about it for a little while, there is usually a way to solve whatever might be going on with the loom or the weaving.

Finally, I oiled the spring clips that hold the heddle bars in place, too, since they seemed a little stiff. 

I also rubbed some furniture paste wax on the metal bars that the heddles slide on.  They had just a little rust on them, and the paste wax will make them slide more smoothly.

I found a few blog posts that were helpful in telling me what I needed to do to get her back up and running again.

* KB Knits & Crafts did a whole series on updating Kessenich Floor Loom.  Although I didn't have to do everything she did, it was very helpful.

• Updating my 1960s Kessenich Floor Loom (May 2016)

•  Kessenich Floor Loom Updating (May 2016)  

• Kessenich--Replacing the Shaft and Lamm Cords (May 2016)
  

• Kessenich Loom Renovation--Cords, Texsolv, and Apron (June 2016)

• Kessenich Loom Renovation--Almost There (June 2016)
  

•  1960's Kessenich Loom Renovated (July 2016)

   

  Bruce and Ann Neimi at Kessenich Looms in Michigan have also been very helpful.
  

Here she is in resting mode.  You'd think there was a grand piano under that drape!  

Remember that vintage wedding ring quilt I bought on eBay?  I was young and naive and believed the seller when they said it was from the 1930s.  It was more like the 1990s -- and with rips and tears everywhere you looked.  I finally gave up trying to repair it.  It should have been listed as a "cutter quilt."  Oh well -- live and learn.  It's good enough (and BIG enough!) to keep the dust and sun off the loom and whatever projects during my work week -- Oh I am looking forward to retirement, but it will be a while yet!

Now we wait -- I ordered a couple of kits to get started.

• Summer Winter Dish Towels  - Kit from Cotton Clouds  This makes 12 towels on 11 yards of warp, so I'm thinking I can mix up the pattern weft colors. 
• Feed Sack Towels Kit - from Yarn Barn of Kansas
  

Kits are usually good ways to get started with a new machine and new fibers.  Someone has picked a pattern, colors and the appropriate materials, so you can concentrate on getting to know the new loom.  ;-)

 Mary Meigs Atwater   [Photo from here.]

And finally -- Homage to The Dean of American Handweaving for whom this loom is named.