A Loom with a View.

I made a loom today, oh boy.

This make was not for me and my ego. We have had a specific request for someone to do weaving at a forthcoming event and the wife has experience but no loom, any excuse for me at the moment to have a go at a make. So I found the plans for a simple lap loom here and took a few pointers from the other half (I've never used a loom or weaved so I bow to her experience). A few things could have been done better but I shall explain as we go on. I also have fewer photos this time as it was freezing out in the yard and I forgot I had to assemble the workbench as it was still in the packaging before I could begin.

Ingredients

• 2m length of wood
• 1m dowel
• 1m length of thinner wood
• Saw
• Workbench
• Drill
• Hammer
• Dremmel style device.
• Sandpaper

Note no glue or nails or permanent fixings, and all the wood came to less than £5 at B&Q.

The first bit was easy, or at least it was easy once I'd assembled the blasted workbench. I cut the wood into two 11" and two 16" lengths and the dowel into lengths long enough to go through the width of wood twice. Then I drilled holes at the corners to take the dowel to join them together. The drill bit I had was unfortunately much narrower than the doweling, whereas we want it to be slightly narrower, too much of a difference can, and did, cause some splitting of the wood, as you can see on the lower pieces here. 

Splitter!

Improving slowly

I remember watching my father chipping a dowel into a wedge or taper to make a rawl plug (I don't think he ever bought a plastic one in his life), so taking this lead I attempted to reduce the extent of the splitting by not only doing this but also by carving a notch in the dowel along it's length to the centre of the diameter deep in the hope that this would allow the dowel to compress a little and this was at least a partial success, however I didn't think to do it until the last joint. Yeah, yeah, I know.

So my final contribution to the exercise was making a shuttle which the wife wanted to have two slits (one on each side) on which to wind the weft (I like the sound of that, wind the weft, wind the weft).  Looking something like this one, but with my own limitations of skill and materials. So I cut a 12" length of the thinner wood, cut a channel at each end beginning with the drill and then the dremmel. Then I took some sandpaper to thin down the ends and make them smooth to feed through the warp on the frame.  Here I pass on to my good lady as she understood and did the next bit.

First I warped the frame (wove the vertical strands of wool onto the frame). Firstly I tied my wool to the top of the frame and pulled this to the the left hand corner. Each strand has to go over one end of the frame and under the other as shown in the lap loom plans linked above and below. When I had finished I tied the end of final strand to the frame. Depending on how wide a piece of fabric you want to make it takes some time but it is worth being careful to make sure each strand is secured the right way to avoid flaws in the finished cloth.
Before beginning the weft I wound the wool for this around the shuttle. Normal I would use a different colour, especially for demonstrating to other people. But as I didn't have one I used the same wool as for the warp. As for pulling the wool down, a school ruler or chopstick works well. If I was doing this for a long time I would look for something to angle it against as you might a large book when reading.

Me again, it should be noted that this frame was not glued or nailed in any way. This was not just to add authenticity to it but also so that the frame can be at least partially dismantled in order to remove the finished weaving without cutting the warp off at the ends. How many such dismantlings and remantlings this frame will survive (or indeed how this may be accomplished without a docker and his crowbar) remains to be seen. Still not a bad for a prototype.

Lessons learnt

• The shuttle is too thick, even at a quarter inch.
• The doweling holes need to be closer in size to the doweling to avoid the splitting issue. For the record the wife thinks that it should be possible to cross tie the corners securely enough for our purposes. 

Links
B&Q. Source of wood, sandpaper, workbench etc.
Hallnet. For the original plans.
Bikkel en Been. Suppliers of re-creation equipment. I'm given to understand their English is very good if you want to email them.
Abakhan. I keep forgetting to mention these guys. The place we get most of our linen, wool etc.
NUT Cymru. I'm not a member but they gave me a free ruler. Yes, I am a corporate whore.