Floor Loom Warping Tip

It's been a summer of sock knitting (which I'll expound on, in another post), as the dining room, where my floor loom is, gets too warm for weaving in the summer.  This problem will be addressed as soon as I can move all my studio equipment and supplies upstairs to a room that will have AC.

But as the temps are finally cooling a bit, I’m *finally* getting to warp the loom, after a year or more of it sitting producing nothing!  The warp is just doubled 8/4 cotton warp, for a series of t-shirt yarn weft-faced rugs. 

I’m using a tip I’m sure I read about on Warped Weavers, but I cannot remember who posted it, and cannot find it again – my apologies to the original poster.  

It involves using double-sided tape on a bar of some sort held across the loom, behind the harnesses, to hold the warp ends in place, for threading.

I don’t know why I never thought of this, as it works wonderfully with sectional warping!  I used to have to keep jumping up to go to the back of the loom and spread out another couple sections of warp ends, so to pick them up to thread in the correct order.  This made threading take twice as long, and was tiring.  

I had saved several firm cardboard inner tubes from bolts of fabric, as I never throw out anything until I’m quite sure I can’t reuse it somehow.  Some weren’t long enough, but one does easily straddle the 45” loom. 

I couldn't find the roll of double-sided tape, so I just used a length of packing tape folded into thirds and flattened.  I secured the tube’s ends to the side rails with short scrap lengths of stretchy t-shirt yarn, to keep the tube from moving. 

The tube is also long enough to hold the beater’s uprights, instead of letting them lie on the floor, so I could trip over them!

I used to use a wooden chair while threading, but hubby’s bath chair works well, with a spare piece of foam as a cushion.  One day I’ll make myself a proper cushion, as I also use the bath chair for spinning, as it’s the perfect height.

 My floor loom is a Hammett.  The beater rails unscrew easily, and the breast beam pulls right off, so a chair can get into the loom for threading the heddles.  It's a good thing, as otherwise it would be a stretch to reach over the breast beam and beater to do the threading!

Onward!

All Tied Up

My 1978 Hammett floor loom came with thick cotton cords for all its tie-ups.  Try as I might, getting everything to be even and at the correct heights is near impossible.  As soon as I think I've got the cords to be even, I go to tie the knots and the cord slips.

I've been wanting to replace all the cords with Texsolv for quite some time. The last 1 3/4 years has seen the loom sitting unused in the dining room, as I wasn't well enough to weave.  Now that I am, I don't want to put a warp onto it, until I replace all the cords.

These types of projects need to be done slowly and methodically, to keep the Oops at bay!  The first thing I did was to collate tools - a small Phillips head screwdriver and good scissors.  Many of the cotton cords were mostly original to the loom and needed prying loose.  When I couldn’t open the knots, I’d just cut the cord close to the knot and push the small cut end through the screw eyes.  This worked well.

The beater had previously been removed.  I also removed the breast beam and the cloth beam and it's ratchet, as I didn't want to bonk my head on the cloth beam, when it was time to crawl inside the loom.  I then clamped the harnesses in place, then I removed the cords from the lamms to the treadles (to relieve the weight and pull from the treadles), then the cords from the harnesses to the lamms.

I then realized I’d need to prop up the harnesses, so they wouldn’t come crashing down, as I removed the top roller cords.  Luckily my loom bench (this barstool at Target) was the perfect height to put under the harnesses.  

 

I then removed the cotton cord and added the Texsolv cord to the right side upper roller, then the right side of the harnesses to secondary roller.  As I had bought a 22-yd spool of Texsolv cord, I cut the lengths generously for this loom, at  23".  Once the loom is warped and any final adjustments to the cording made, I can trim the excess.

Because the lamms are hinged on the left side, I couldn’t put the stool on the left to hold the harnesses up, so I used some of the freed up cotton cord to tie the harnesses up over the top roller, and replaced the cords on the left side.

I'm using these brass paper holders to secure the Texsolv ties.  Thanks to Lucille on the Warped Weavers Ravelry group for the idea!  They work well and cost much less than Texsolv pegs. Once I was happy with how things were hanging, I folded the paper clip ends around and over the button end.

Then I replaced the harness to lamm cords, then finally the lamm to treadle cords.  A small empty box held the treadles up at a good height – it's hard enough on the body being squished into a small space on the floor, without having to also  hold up heavy treadles, while trying to insert cords!  And to hasten this process, I used extra long cords for the harnesses to lamms and lamms to treadles, so that I only needed one clip on each cord, instead of 2.

It wasn’t a quick project, but quicker than putting a warp on!  And you may have noticed, I replaced the original metal heddles with Texsolv – no more clanking and banging – I don’t like unnecessary noise.

Now that the loom is done, I can begin to warp for afghan and rag rug samples.
Onward,
Dawn