Getting a warp onto the loom

Many thanks to Peg for the series of posts she has written this month showing how she prepares her loom for weaving.

The first one she wrote, on 3rd November gave me an idea. Peg uses a table behind her loom. When I first read this it slipped into the back of my mind. When I came to put a warp on my own loom last weekend, and I was thinking through the process, I remembered the table. So much easier than crawling around on the floor as I have done before now. But I don't have a handy little table.

After a bit of thought; loom bench - too low, wallpaper past table - too big, buy a new table - hmm, no; I looked around and saw my ironing board - perfect!
Peg also uses two wooden bars the length of the loom to hold the rod and lease sticks level. This won't work for my loom, but a solid support for the lease sticks is a big advantage, so I came up with this:
That cloth wrapped "table" is a combination of the cloth beam (the one that lifts woven cloth above my knees when I'm weaving) and a large raddle. I wrapped it to stop any thread groups dropping through the raddle gaps.

These new ideas saved lots of time and back ache (thanks for that, Peg!).

Here's the sequence I went through to get my warp on the loom.

First, end of the back apron is on the warp board under the warp, unattached at this stage is the apron rod threaded through the ends of the warp groups.

The warp groups were then spread in the raddle (clamped to the back beam)...
... and a peice of string tied along the top of the raddle pins to retain the warp in the raddle. I passed the warp forwards onto my "table" the other side of the back beam.

Then it was easy to thread the lease sticks thorough the carefully tied thread groups (above).

To tie the apron rod with the warp ends onto the back apron, I used my trusty little Ashford shuttle. This is just right for giving even length ties. See the next two pictures for how the rod at the end of the cloth is bottom of the pile, on top of it I place the rod with the warp, then the shuttle placed on top and a tie made of thick linen warp thread. I use bows because they hold tight but are quick to undo.

Moving to the front of the loom I was able to pick up my warp chains from the "table" and draw them forwards for weighting in front of the front beam while winding-on.
This is a close up of the raddle I was using on the back beam. After the comments on my last post about setting up the loom, I decided to make a new raddle with pins at 1/4 inch.
But I had tied the warp in 1/2 inch groups on the warp board. To begin with I spaced it in every other section, later when there was tension on the warp (with the chains weighted for winding-on) I split the groups into half.
This gave the most beautiful evenly spread warp for winding on.
Now for something different. When I visited my friend at Bolton Art Studios a few weeks ago, I bought (in aid of Studio funds) some odds and ends that had come from Bolton University who are very sadly giving up teaching weaving.

Here are some of the goodies, three old Dryad rigid heddles, a sley hook and a couple of threading hooks:
The little threading hooks are comfortable to hold and easy to use. Definitely an improvement on the 3mm crochet hook I was using before.

When sleying the reed, with it resting in front of the heddles, supported on carboard boxes on the sides of the loom, it occured to me an advantage of working this way is being able to see easily how many threads you have pulled through each reed section...
... and having a clear view back to the heddles to help avoid crossed threads between heddles and reed.
I say help avoid, because I still managed a few crossed threads. (!)

While tying-on the warp to the front apron, I made use of the new posts at the side of my loom (and more linen warp thread).
I used the larks head knots that I prefer but I have noted from Peg's writing that this doesn't work well with slippery silk threads, so when I get to weaving silk I shall try to remember that.
Related posts:

Colours and thoughts on looms
Setting up for colour and weave
Along the way

Success: 14 treadles on my countermarch loom

My loom now has 14 treadles, all set up and working beautifully, the warp is on and I'll be weaving later tonight.

Here is part one of the story.

The difficulty with adding treadles is that, as Sue commented on my last post, it unbalances the loom unless you add shafts at the same time. The countermarch system doesn't have "balance" in the name, but it is all about good balance. The weight of the treadles is balanced by the weight of the shafts.

This is how the lams on my loom were behaving with 14 treadles in use and 8 shafts (I'm only going to weave on 4, but have some ties on the back shafts to lower lams to help with the balance):


Toika looms should have parallel lams, with equal spaces between treadle - lower lam - upper lam - shaft. The above arrangement was not going to work. So, next stage, down to the kitchen drawer and out with my trusty spring balance (originally bought for use in setting up cam tension on a Ducati motorbike I used to own!).

Going back to school physics lessons, I remember learning about balancing things and diagrams of seesaws with different length arms and different sized weights. I'm not sure I can explain in full, but the further you are from a pivot point the more leverage there is and the less weight is needed to get the arm to balance.

I started by moving the treadle weight closer to the pivot points. There are lots of extra holes in my lams and treadles. I moved treadle 1 to as close as possible to the lam pivot, and I also moved the shafts back relative to the treadles so they were closer to the treadle pivot.

Then to find out how much weight was needed to balance for the four new treadles we had added, we used a peice of string around the top lams and pulled down with the spring balance until the lam was in the level position. In the centre of the top lams, the balance read 7.5 pounds (it doesn't have a metric scale). At the outer end of the top lam it was 5 pounds.

We divided the weight by the number of shafts (8) and made up lead weights from folding lead flashing left from a roofing job. With a couple of holes drilled in the top of each weight they were easily hung under the end of the top lams. Note, for safe handling I shall be making tough cloth covers for the weights.

This shows the new position, see the weights at left hand end of the upper lams:
I've got a warp on now and have been using treadles 13 & 14 for plain weave. The action is beautiful and the shed a good 3 inches.

Now for a different kind of change to the loom. When I bought it, the previous owner had stuck adhesive numbers on the treadles, 1-10. Most of these have peeled off over time, I took off the last few and replaced them with a different labeling that I find easier.
I wrapped green thread around every 3rd treadle, red around every 4th, blue on 5 & 10. I'm better at reading colour and pattern than I am at numbers, I think this will work for me.

Some notes on tying up the treadles, I followed the system used by a friend who has a Toika loom modified to take 16 shafts - she's familiar with lots of shafts and treadles! Her tip was always start with the treadle nearest the lam pivot (the one I think of as number one) and work along. With the treadles not tied up supported (I've got a cardboard box to rest them on) you can see as you go along if one particular tie is putting the lams out of balance. Of course there are times when it is temporarily unbalanced, and you have to make a note of what changed the balance and decide how to counterbalance.

Here's another new tool. With less space under the loom, this time I tied the treadles from the front and was glad of a small homemade cushion:
My old cushion - the phone book - is still in place at the back of the loom in case I have to squeeze in to make changes with the warp on the loom:
One last tweak, the beater was just catching the new uprights on the loom frame when it was swung back, a little foam cushioning does wonders:

This is the warp I put on the loom, it's for another colour sampler:

and bobbins - ready to weave, but that is a story for my next post. Bye for now!

Treadles

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...

Looms are made of wood...

O.K., so you knew that, or to quote molesworth ""as any fule kno"" (see end). The import of my chosen title is this - what one woodworker has put together another can modify / adapt / rebuild as necessary. So, having for some time thought that my loom didn't look quite right and might not be the proper shape, and then I after getting irritated during the last piece of weaving by the upper jacks sliding forwards so the shafts were catching on each other, I got out a spirit level. There was a difference of a few millimetres in height between the back and front of the support for the jacks. For the last length of warp I used a minor modification - an old birthday card folded up to lift the front support. Then it was time to take a proper look at the loom, with set square and tape measure.

Hey, you can see it for yourself in that picture! The top has dropped at the front. Actually, when we looked closer nothing was bent and the fastening screws hadn't shifted, so it has never been right. That explains why the previous owner was trying out plastic spacers to keep the jacks and the lams separate (!) (note (from one wise after the event): when buying a second hand loom take a tape measure, set square, spirit level and look for faults in the frame.) It just so happens that last week we had a large delivery of sycamore wood for building a new staircase. The woodyard also sent the offcuts, which included some good sized pieces of wood. The resident woodworker got to work for me with his power saw, hand plane and router. The new supports were then finished with a couple of coats of danish oil. They look lovely. It's not the same as Finish birch (as used by Toika) but the wood is pale, close grained, strong and beautiful. See how square the corners look now:

The posts were fitted with simple plates to make them "I" section that are screwed into the frame top and bottom.

See below for the tenon joint that holds the fixing plate:

Just to follow up the literary quote in the first line, this is from "How to be Topp" by Geoffrey Williams & Ronald Searle, first published 1954, the copy in our house is a well read and loved falling-apart Puffin edition of 1964. 

Colours and thoughts on looms.

Sitting here, looking out of my window in the Derbyshire Peak District today I see dull greens, and lots of grey. There's a few bright colours around the garden, but typically for this summer the dominant colour is mid to deep grey sky and light grey mists. This latest weaving project is therefore particularly appealing. Here's the yarns again: I'm setting up to weave a multi-colour sampler to look at how different warp and weft colours interact. Thre are 15 different colours in the warp, and I plan to use a few extra in the weft. The extras are blues, greens, white and navy blue (I don't have black). Using them for weft only means that I won't see the interaction of these extra colours with each other, only with the rainbow of warp colours. I'm going to weave plain weave in every colour, then twill in every colour, then - not absolutely decided on this but probably a pattern from the Janet Phillip's sample blanket that moves from 3/1 twill to 1/3 twill. I'm a bit tempted by the idea of a textured weave, like waffle, but I'd have to cut off and re-thread the loom to get this. I have put on 4.5 metres long warp and I'm using 12/2 mercerised cotton. Well, mostly 12/2. I got to the burgandy shade and discovered it seems to be a finer yarn than the others, not sure what it is, so I am compensating for that with extra threads - 40 epi instead of 30 epi. 30 epi is is fairly dense for the plain weave, but a bit loose for the twill. I'll test this out in weaving the first few inches of header, and if I don't like this compromise I'll re-sley between the plain weave and the twill sections. I spent a week of spare bits of time winding the warp, and then it took 8 hours last Sunday to get the chained warp onto the loom. Here's some pictures from doing this:

This is at the stage of having the apron rod through the end of the warp chains and tied to the cloth apron, and lease sticks in, ready to lift off the floor and onto the loom. I bundled the warp chains into a cloth bag to make it easier to lift everything, see below.

Then I tied the apron rod to the back beam with spare linen warp thread and got out my homemade raddle and clamped that on the back beam. I had a counting thread in each chained warp bundle that separated out bunches of 15 threads to slot into the half inch gaps in the raddle.

And, then I wound the warp onto the back beam:

I have realised that I could get a slightly bigger countermarch loom in here. The space behind the loom to the step in the floor is enough to fit in a larger Toika - such as the lovely Liisa, or a Glimakra Standard. I got quite excited when I realised this recently, as these two larger looms have a space at the back that makes it easier to get in behind the loom for tying up the treadles. I then got to looking at the wonderful Oxaback Cyrus loom, which is featured in an article in the latest Vavmagasinet. It is a superb loom, but needs 2 metres width and I don't have that much space. I started dreaming of my perfect loom. Eight shafts. Or twelve. Second warp beam. Big and beautiful. I had the notion that the slightly larger looms might hive a good weaving shed more easily. Easier to get access to tie up those treadles. Mmm. I looked around and checked out the prices. Then I read that someone else thought that one's first loom always seems the best. I realised I love my loom. It's beautiful. It works. I can weave. Also, I can get extra shafts for it (up to twelve) and I could fit a second warp beam., if my resident woodworker drills extra holes in the frame (note if you buy a new Norjaana, do ask for this to be done at the factory. They can do it, it just isn't done as standard). Although it's a bit cramped and uncomfortable to get in at the back of the loom, it doesn't take long to tie up the treadles. In spite of all those wonderful dreams, I breathed a sigh of relief. I don't have to advertise and sell my dear Toika, I don't have to go through the hassle of seeking out the next loom. I don't have to buy brand new to get what I want (brand new looms depreciate by 50% about as soon as you get them home). And, as regards getting a better weaving shed on a bigger loom, I have consulted other members of the Weave Tech yahoo group. The Glimakra and the Oxaback (Lilla) looms are 2 1/2 to 3 inches taller. That's not much, I don't see that it will make a substantial difference. Vertical jacks at the top of countermarch looms might be better than horizontal, but lots of people work on looms similar to mine and are entirely happy. I'll keep working with this one, have a go at improving my tie up technique and then look at getting the extras for it. I am seriously tempted however by the thought of a portable loom - the Louet Jane, (link to Susan's blog "Thrums") a new model based on the popular Kombo model, due out this autumn. (More about the "Jane" from Jane Stafford who recommended the improvements to Louet).

Setting up for colour and weave.

Still no colour and weave blanket photos. If you read my last post, you will know that it is at Quarry Bank Mill, Styal, Cheshire (England) this week in the annual exhibition of the Alsager Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers. I'll get it back next Sunday evening (14th) and photos will follow thereafter. So, as consolation, here's a gallery of photos of getting the colour and weave warp on the loom. Here's the collection of chained warp sections. You can see one of the tie on labels that I used to distinguish the different sections. And here are the sections of warp going on to an apron rod, all carefully ordered. The I used the green threads to divide each section and for selvedges.

Next - warp on the back apron rod, lease sticks in and onto the loom.

(Yes, I did get a bit carried away with the photos... I've deleted lots as I don't know why I took them! Only 11 posted here, but maybe this series of pictures will be some use to someone? If not, skip to the end, last photo is of my charming little weaving assistant.)

Weighted warp ready to wind on. This is my current favourite method. The weights are over the front beam and start resting on the floor, then I wind till the reach the beam, take each off and re-tie. I know there are other means of tensioning the warp, but this worked well especially as there were tension problems in this warp caused by having lots of knots tied to change thread colours. The loose threads looked a bit scary at one stage, but I the tension seems to even up at the lease sticks as I wind and it was beautifully even for weaving. Apart from the selvedges getting slack. But that's another story.

The photo above means more to me than you might expect. This is the widest warp I have put on my loom and it took ages. I had a few new problems arise. For the first time I had to move heddles around, I needed extra in the middle and for the first time I needed heddles past the outer lam ties (those ones at each end that the top bar of the shafts hang from). And, at the back of the loom there were 4 shafts I wasn't using. I removed most of the heddles from these so they would not get in the way, but left a small bundle at the end of each shaft. Why did I leave these? Well, as I discovered (oops, slip, bang, crash ....etc all rude words here deleted...) remove the heddles and the bottom shaft bar drops to the floor!!! (Note: this is a countermarch loom.) I love this reed sleying method, it's so easy and quick that I've given up using my autodenter.

Key equipment are a couple of boxes to rest the reed on and a little plastic Ashford reed hook.

I tied on to the front apron rod with larks head knots. I find this the easiest method to use if I think I might need to adjust any section of the warp. It's very quick to undo, adjust, re-tie.

On this occasion I got the tension beautiful first go, and wove a neat header. However, with so many different colour and weave patterns across the width of the peice, I wove a few more inches before I spotted a few errors. There were three places where I had to correct errors. Here's one of them, just about centre of the picture:

I'm getting quite adept now at the cut off, re-thread and sley and sew ends back in:

With this fixed, I was ready to weave. The colour order for weft followed the same patterns as the warp - see my earlier post giving the thread order. I wove through the list for plain weave (except I skipped a bit - 3 white, 4 blue repeated is so similar to 4 white 3 blue it didn't seem worthwhile) then I started again using diagonal 2-2 twill. I finished up with Bedford cord and a weft rib. I spent about a week of spare moments getting the warp on the loom, and most of the next week weaving. 

A Universal Tie up for a Countermarch Loom

Janet Phillip's book directs countermarch loom owners to use a universal tie up to weave the sample blanket - unless you have 14 treadles. I have 10 treadles.

I had heard of universal tie up before, and although I could understand easily how with a jack loom you can tie one shaft to one treadle, I did not see how on earth it could work for a countermarch. Generally, with countermarch looms the rule is that every treadle lifts or lowers every lam. So, you don't leave any gaps in the tie up unless you have unused shafts.

After all the playing about I did learning to get my countermarch tied up and balanced, I couldn't accept this universal tie up notion - except I had to because I believe that Janet knows what she's writing about. So I put disbelief to one side (if there's one thing I've learned in life it's how little I know) and I tied up on the scheme she gives. This tie up enables plain weave, and lifts for 2/2 twill, 3/1 twill and 1/3 twill.

Using 8 treadles, and 4 shafts, the scheme is:

treadle 1 tied to upper lams for shafts 1 and 3
treadle 2 tied to lower lams for shafts 1 and 3
treadle 3 tied to upper lam shaft 1, and lower lam shaft 3
treadle 4 tied to lower lam shaft 1 and upper lam shaft 3

treadle 5 tied to lower lam shaft 2 and upper lam shaft 4
treadle 6 tied to upper lam shaft 2 and lower lam shaft 4
treadle 7 tied to lower lams shafts 2 and 4
treadle 8 tied to upper lam shafts 2 and 4

It's a very skimpy looking tie up compared to the normal countermarch arrangement:

You always use two treadles together, and if you get the right combination it works! However, my initial skepticism nearly caused me to give up before I started. Especially when having followed the basic instructions I got to this vision of chaos:


I stomped downstairs to make a cup of tea, shouting out "doesn't work". Fortunately I live with a man who likes solving problems. Keeps me on my toes. "It should do" he said, "I read the book and it's logical, I'll have a look at it in a moment...."

That had me running back upstairs with the cry of "If it does work, then I CAN do it, it's MY mechano set, MY model railway..."

(Sad isn't it, these are references to childhood 30 plus years ago when my brother had engineering toys and and I wasn't allowed in the room when they were out. I had to make do with wool, a crochet hook and bits of string and card for constructing things (I managed to make a theatre for my string puppets)... if only someone had given me a loom in those days!) (Later in life I made up for the frustration by working for engineering firms and playing with old motorbikes!)

I got the book out again and checked I had done everything as Janet directs. Then I looked at the ties, and decided that my normal principles applied: upper lam ties need around two texsolv notches slack and lower lam ties should be taut. It only took a handful of alterations and suddenly it worked.

The treadling plans in the book for the sample blanket show shaft lifts. For each lift, I was going to have to use two treadles, so I copied out the diagram showing in the bottom row the treadles and above the shafts lifted.And this I pinned to a handy little cork board on the castle of my loom. (I'd been wondering what it that was for).
Then, for each pattern I wove I wrote the shaft lifts in order on a small white board which I placed at the side of the loom.
It's not a very clear photo, but I divided the list with horizontal lines as this helps me keep track of where I have got to. Then I recited the pattern to myself as I went, "4 - and - 5, then 3 - and - 5". I found I could get into a nice rhythm for weaving this way.