August 2011 – Page 3 – Fiber Musings

Isn't that hand carved beater bar a thing of beauty?

10 yard warp with Jaggerspun Zephyr and handspun. 900 ends + 4 floating selvedge ends at 30 epi using a 15 dent reed. 60 of those ends were handspun. “Were” because 3 of them broke (drifted apart) while warping. I replaced them with Zephyr because I didn’t want the singles to dangle, unspin, and drift apart. Okay. I was lazy. I had wound extra Zephyr just in case, so they were handy. There was only 1 threading mistake that I found so far (the pin in the photo). Hooray!

It only took 25 hours to dress this loom. 25 hours to go from bare loom to this point. Sigh. I sure hope it gets faster as I gain more experience with this loom!

Many firsts with this one:

First time weaving yardage
First time using floating selvedge
First time weaving with the Fireside Loom

I’m still getting a feel of this loom. It’s so much larger than my Gilmore Gem II. I’m finding that I need to work on putting a bit more oomph when I throw the shuttle to make it all the way through (30″ width at the reed). The Bluster Bay shuttles are a bit too tall to get under my floating selvedge so I switched to my pretty Schacht one. The outside treadles are just a wee bit further than my normal seated leg span so a bit more scootching is required. I might swap out the weaving bench for my task chair that I use with the Gilmore. We’ll see.

I’m still trying to find the sweet spot on the tensioned brake so that I can advance the warp easily. Too much tension, I can’t advance it without manually loosening up the back beam. Too little tension, the warp advances by itself with every beat. I feel a bit like Goldilocks right now, except I haven’t found “just right” yet.

I will never ever warp Zephyr front to back again, especially not at this epi. The yarn is soft and fuzzed up and quickly adhered itself to its neighbors. Beaming on took a lot of patience.

The handspun single is working. I need to weave a bit more before I call it a success. The color runs are longer than I wanted them to be, but it works. You can’t see the spots of color from the handspun in the picture because I’m weaving with the wrong side of the fabric facing up. This allows me to just raise one harness instead of 4. Much easier to treadle this way, but difficult to see what you are doing. I have a hand mirror that I stick under the fabric every once in a while. That doesn’t work very well because it’s dark. And if I put the light on it, it glares and I still can’t see.

The Fireside Loom has finally been moved into the house and assembled. The guest room has been taken over and transformed into a weaving room. I can’t call it a studio yet because I would need to do a few more things to the room before I can call it that. The room is too small for both the futon bed (even folded) and the loom to co-exist. I must give up all pretense of calling it a “guest room” though.

However, I must admit that the handmade cherry futon frame (made for Martin’s dad and stepmother back in the 60s) and the cherry loom look very nice together…

Back to the loom. Here’s the back side:

And look, the back beam folds up so you can get closer to the heddles while warping front to back!

Yes, those are double back beams you see. And here’s a view from the front:

Not a fan of front to back? Well, here’s something for the back to front…the front beam lifts off so you can get closer to the heddles from the front.

Here’s a detail of the dove joint for the front beam:

What about the beater bar? It lifts right off. I forgot to take a picture of that, but just take my word for it.

Best part of all this manipulation? No tools are required. Just lift or turn. That’s it. Everything is set up perfectly!

And while you are sleying the reed, they’ve drilled a hole through the beater bar and into the frame to hold the beater in an upright position.

Yes, that’s a nail you see where the peg should be. That, apparently is a part that I didn’t pay attention to when I picked up the loom. I’ll ask Rachel about it, but I doubt that she still has it. The nail is utilitarian and jars with the beauty of the loom. I will go to the hardware store and buy a piece of brass and cut it down to size, one for each side. I can probably stick one end into a small piece of cherry block to make it look a bit better, and less likely to get lost.

I pretty much bought the loom based on Fireside Loom’s reputation and my lust for the cherry and hand carved beater bar. I know Rachel (the previous and original owner) walked me through the loom, but I must admit that I didn’t comprehend much of it except some of the highlights — primarily the story of how she came by the loom and had it made.

There are a few things that I didn’t pay attention to…like what dent reed (10. I bought a 12 and 15 last weekend), how many heddles (still need to count, but I think 1000). I will likely add to or swap out the heddles for texsolv. I also don’t like the cords used for the treadles so will likely swap those out too.

Funny. I didn’t think I bought a project.

Random thoughts of a fiber enthusiast - mostly fiber related, sometimes coherent

Month: August 2011

Dressed!

Fireside Loom