Friday, May 24, 2024

Dressing the Glimakra B2F Step 4: Threading, Sleying, Lashing On

1. Prepare the loom for threading the heddles.

With a large loom, the important thing is to be comfortable. To accommodate heddle threading, I removed the breast and and knee beams. Then I had room to place a chair closer to the heddles.

I'll probably replace the chair with a slightly shorter stool next time.

This next idea I found on Peggy Osterkamp's blog, Threading the Loom Without Mistakes. She credits Jim Ahrens for teaching her this trick. 

A stick, such as an apron rod or broom handle, is hung from the castle. The warp (coming from the warp beam) is draped over the stick as you see below.


Lease sticks are placed in the threading cross and secured so that the cross hangs behind the shafts and easily accessible for threading. You can see a nice diagram at Peggy's blog (link above).

It just a matter of cutting the bottom warp loops to separate the ends and then picking the next one from the cross, threading as you go across the warp.

2. Threading the heddles

With a little experimentation, I found that the warp needs to hang in length to about the top of the lower lamms.

With this length I could easily pull bundles of warp ends through to cut the loop on the bottom from the warping board.

It also gave me enough length to secure the warp in the threaded heddles with a slip knot.


3. Sleying the reed. 

In the beater or not? I chose to lay the reed flat across support sticks. 
  1. Put the breast and knee beams back in place.
  2. Remove lease sticks and holder
  3. Lay the reed horizontally on support sticks
The set-up

This was a good time to double/triple check my threading.

Then the beater is put back on and the reed secured.

4. Lashing the warp onto the front apron rod.

I think tying the warp onto the apron rod is the more common practice, but I like to lash the warp to the front apron rod. I think it's easier to tension it this way. Weaver's preference. I have a photo tutorial here ⇢ How To Lash On a Warp.

The first time I warped this loom I didn't go behind the knee beam so that there was no room for my knees under the warp!

Photo from Warping the Glimakra: The 3 Duhs

I remembered this time.

Tips:
  • The lashing cord needs to be smooth and 9-10 times the width of the warp.
  • No knots in the cord (one continuous length).
 
Dressing the Glimakra B2F Step 5: Tying Up the Lamms & Treadles

4 comments:

Meg said...

Ah, countermarche? I will be thinking of you.

Leigh, I want my comment screen to look/set up like yours. When you have a moment, do you mind letting me know what options you have when you go into Setting/Comments/Who can Comment? And what you've chosen?? Thank you very much in advance.

Leigh said...

Meg, at this point I need all the help I can get! lol

I'll pop on over to your blog to answer your question about comment set-up.

Toirdhealbheach Beucail said...

Today I learned a new word: Sley. Just the vocabulary and terminology of all of this alone is fascinating, let alone the actual work itself!

Leigh said...

TB, it's interesting, isn't it, how every technical field has it's own vocabulary. I think "sley" is strictly a weaving term. But I always wonder about crossover.