It's late, and I'm tired, and I shouldn't be sitting up at the computer... but I wanted to tell you about the new treadles for my loom. I haven't got them yet, but they are promised. It all came out of a discussion after tea this evening about wood and woodworking and the progress of the new staircase, and I mentioned that if I had more treadles I wouldn't have to use the universal tie up for the weaving I'm doing at the moment. With 14 treadles you can tie up properly for plain weave, 2/2 twill, 3-1 and 1-3 twills on 4 shafts.
We had a look at how it will work, I've taken a treadle off the loom for a pattern, and now I am going around with a big grin, and I'm singing happy tunes to myself, and have started winding the next warp. I have every confidence in the household woodworker. He's building a beautiful staircase from sycamore, and a few bits for my loom can be managed out of the extra wood that came (we got most of the bole of a tree, the sawmill like you to take your own off-cuts!).
We'll see how this goes, but if the extra 4 treadles work well I'll think about whether / how we can fit more shafts. I'm not sure if I can have more and still have space and reach to tie up. But, I did have a tip from another Toika owner that the previous owner of her loom got 16 shafts in by making them strong and thin. With a good woodworker around, all sorts of things may be possible. We'll see. Do I need more shafts? Hmm, not really, I'm using 4 just now, but I'm keen to move on to double weave and for that half the shafts are used for each layer, so I might want more than 8.
Time I signed off, good night all. Hope you have good dreams too...
7 hours ago
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3 comments:
Hi Dorothy,
Don't understand all the intricacies of what you are up to-but anything that makes you sing happty tunes has got to be good !Look forward to seeing what comes off the loom. If the past is anything to go by it will be pretty spectacular !
Yay, Dot! I've been wishing for more treadles too, now that I've started weaving summer & winter again. I'm excited for you.
Dot, I really enjoy your blog! And most of all your plunge-ahead-with-it attitude. A word of caution on increasing the number of shafts. There are lots of bits of info rattling around in my head, as the owner of 2 CM Glimakra's, and one of them has to do with the notion not to put anything out of whack when fooling around with the countermarche action, which adding shafts may (MAY, not will) do. You esp. don't want to put the whole weighted system out of balance. So, before drilling those holes in both sets of lamms when adding more shafts, try looping the tie-up cords around first to see how it works. I haven't tried this yet on either of my looms, but it's something I've thought about. Good for you on adding the treadles--I use the 2-foot universal tie-up, and it can be a pain sometimes finding the treadles.
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