Showing posts with label warping b2f. Show all posts
Showing posts with label warping b2f. Show all posts

Friday, May 31, 2024

Dressing the Glimakra B2F Step 6: Checking the Shed, Weaving a Header

Continued from Dressing the Glimakra B2F Step 5: Tying Up the Lamms & Treadles

Remove the countermarch locking pins

The locking pins keep the jacks (and everything else) from moving.

The shafts shouldn't drop more than slightly.

Evaluate the shed

This involves weaving a couple shots and then pressing each treadle in turn to check the levelness of the bottom of the shed. 

Adjustments needed on both bottom and top

Fortunately, I took good notes on adjusting the shed the first time I set up the Glimakra. That post is here. Plus, I have Joanne Hall's Tying Up the Countermarch Loom (book review here). The summary of the process as follows.

All adjustments to a countermarch loom start at the top. 
  • With locking pins in place, check:
    • That the shafts are centered to the loom. 
    • That the warp runs through the center of the heddle eyes. If it doesn't, then the shafts need to be raised or lowered accordingly by adjusting the cord on the anchor pins on the jacks at the top of the countermarch.
    • That the beater height allows the shed to run through the middle of the reed.
    • That the lamms are level with one another. Adjust if necessary.
  • Remove the locking pins
    • Depress each treadle in turn and examine the shed. 
    • If all the warp ends are level, that's it.
    • If some of them are above or below the others, make notes of which shaft they are on.
To adjust the shed, replace the countermarch locking pins.
  • To adjust the bottom threads of the shed:
    • Start by adjusting treadle cords at the upper lamms. Use your notes.
    • For shafts with warp threads that are too high, shorten the treadle ties.
    • For shafts with warp ends that are below the shed, lengthen the treadle ties.
    • Remove the locking pins and check again. Make more adjustments needed.
  • To adjust the top of the shed:
    • Adjust the treadle cords at the lower lamms, using your list.
    • For threads that run too high, lengthen the treadle ties.
    • For threads that run too low, shorten the treadle ties.
    • Recheck and repeat if needed.
    • Note that this is opposite of what was done with the upper lamms.

Note: Treadles don't have to be even in height.

Weave the header

Couldn't help but be a little nervous. Did I get my shed adjustments right? Did I make any threading mistakes? I caught a few when I sleyed the reed. Did I get the tension even across the warp? I'll find out now!


Things to check:
  • Shed: good
  • Treadle height: comfortable
  • Fell line: straight
  • Threading errors: the only "error" turned out to be a dropped treadle cord
  • The ski shuttle worked well

Next time should go more quickly. For one thing, the shafts and lamms should need no further adjustment in the future. Plus, with this warp, I spent a lot of time researching, reading, re-reading, and comparing notes from various sources. For future reference, I have this blog series to refer to. 

And with that, I'm ready to weave.

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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
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Sunday, May 19, 2024

Dressing the Glimakra B2F Step 3: Winding on the Warp

Continued from Dressing the Glimakra B2F Step 2: Loading the Raddle

With this step, I was in more familiar territory. I just need to adjust it to this particular loom.

1. Tensioning the warp

Should the warp be weighted, and if so, how? There are different schools of thought here.
  • No weights, tension by manually tugging on the warp after each rotation of the beam. (Chandler)
  • Applying resistance with weights or another mechanism such as a warping drum or another person. (Osterkamp). In fact, Peggy basically states the more tension during winding on, the better (although she also gives instructions for the no-tension method).
Once upon a time I used half-gallon milk jugs, which I don't get anymore because we have our own goat milk. But I did have some empty gallon vinegar jugs and used these plus a distilled water jug. 

For my personal notes: each jug weighs 8.5 pounds.

2. Winding on

The idea is for the warp to wind onto the warp beam the same width as in the raddle.

Detangle as needed by snapping the warp. 

Tangles at the raddle can result with broken threads; snapping the warp works them out.

Insert packing sticks at regularly spaced intervals to cover apron cords. This prevents the knots from making lumps in the warp.


Rolls of paper can be used instead, but the sticks came with my loom, so I use them.

Of course the weights have to be re-positioned as the warp is wound on. 

I left enough in front for threading, sleying, and tying onto the front apron rod. Then it was time to . . .

3. Remove the raddle


Now I'm ready to thread the heddles.

Notes and Observations
  • There is plenty of room for improvement, which I'll work on in the future. At least I've made a start.
  • The bunching of the warp bouts is a concern as it creates V shapes with the warp. Osterkamp recommends the following to prevent variations in tension due to the angle the warp is winding onto the beam
    1. Insert lease sticks into the threading cross and remove the choke ties.
    2. Then put an end stick into the threading end loop and spread the warp out to the proper width.
Dressing the Glimakra B2F Step 4: Threading, Sleying, Lashing On
 
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Friday, May 17, 2024

Dressing the Glimakra B2F Step 2: Loading the Raddle

Continued from Dressing the Glimakra B2F Step 1: Measuring the Warp

First question: where to load the raddle? At the loom or on a table and then carry it to the loom?
Second question: where to place the raddle at the loom?

There are a variety of answers to these questions, all of which reflect the preferences of different weavers and the types of looms they have. My choices are my experiments, to be tweaked in the future as it suits me.

1. Set up the loom

Considering the size and weight of my raddle, plus the amount of room I have to work in, I opted to load the raddle at the back of the loom. Here is my set-up.


a. Support sticks rest on the front and back beams.

b. Lease sticks to secure the raddle lease (cross).

c. Raddle is as as close to the back beam as possible. Peggy Osterkamp recommends this as the best position to help ensure that the warp winds on at the same width as on the raddle.

d. End stick

Note: I later fine tuned the set-up because I found the lease and end sticks slid around too much as I worked with the warp. Here's what I did about it, and what I'll do next time . . .

With shoe laces, the end stick is tied to the back beam
and the lease sticks are tied to the gable of the loom.

One "problem" is my double back beam, as it's somewhat in the way. I considered removing it, but that would be another step, and I don't have a place to put it at the moment. I decided to try and work around it. I'll adjust if necessary. 


2. Insert lease sticks into the raddle cross.

Bouts spread out on lease sticks.

Lease sticks tied together to prevent warp from slipping off.

3. Insert end stick into the raddle end of the warp.


This is where it came in handy to have used different color choke ties for the upper and lower sides of the cross. Otherwise, I might have twisted some of the bouts when I put them on the end stick.

After the bouts are on the end stick, the choke ties are removed.


4. Distribute the raddle groups in the raddle.

I had 88 raddle groups of 4 threads each, so I counted out 44 raddle dents from center to begin laying them in, starting starting at one end and working to the other.

5. Attach the end stick to the back apron rod or transfer warp to apron rod.

Here, they are tied together with stout string, starting in the middle
of the warp and working outward with new ties every 3 or 4 inches.

I found tying the rods together to be tedious and time consuming. Next time, I'll try transferring the warp from the end stick to the apron rod. 

6. Remove the lease sticks.

7. Secure the raddle.

Ready for the next step

Options for raddle placement are as varied as there are weavers. Chandler puts her's on the breast beam, while Osterkamp recommends as close to the back beam as possible. I was able to tie mine onto the back of the loom.

My conclusion about the second back beam is to remove it, unless I'm going to use it. While it was only mildly inconvenient to have it on the loom, I think it would be easier to warp without it. 

Now, I'm ready to wind the warp onto the back beam.

Dressing the Glimakra B2F Step 4: Threading, Sleying, Lashing On
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Wednesday, May 15, 2024

Dressing the Glimakra B2F Step 1: Measuring the Warp

Tucked away in my copy of Tying Up the Countermarch Loom by Joanne Hall, I found the notes I'd once  written about how to warp the Glimakra back-to-front (B2F). 47 steps! And none of it rings a bell. Eek! My first impulse was to go to YouTube, where I found a few videos, but those still left me with questions. Next, I read through my blog posts on warping back-to-front. My Warping the Glimakra: Winding It On post had some helpful notes, photos, and comments from readers. But it wasn't enough to take me through the process, so I pulled out Chandler's Learning to Weave and Osterkamp's first two volumes of her New Guide to Weaving series, and started reading.

The purpose of this series is to write a guide for myself. I want to detail the steps for next time and as many times as it takes afterward until it becomes second nature to me again. Maybe it will be helpful for someone else too. I will likely modify this as I try variations, so suggestions and tips are welcome!

Knot notes
  • (Osterkamp) Use a double half hitch at beginning and end of warp. After the warp is measured, cut the end of the loop and slip the tail off.
  • Keep all knots at threading lease end of the warp, as this is where the threads must later be cut apart for threading the heddles. I.e., the raddle end loop needs to remain intact for securing the warp onto the end stick.

1. Mark the warp path with a guide string and measure the warp. 

I decided to try Osterkamp's method of 2 leases (crosses).

At one end is the thread-by-thread lease for threading the heddles

At the other end is the raddle lease. It groups warp according to sett and raddle sections.

Raddle lease example: for this project, the sett is 8 e.p.i., and my raddle sections are ½ inch. So my raddle lease groups are four warp ends (threads) each. 

2. Keep track by counting the raddle groups.

My raddle groups were 4 ends each, so I chose to count them in groups
of 5, or 20 ends per group. There are 100 warp ends shown here.

Warping Board Tips: 
  • Don't allow warp ends to overlap on the pegs (creates uneven lengths)
  • Keep bouts (sections of warp) to no more than 1.5 to 2 inches in width (pegs tend to pull in as they fill with warp, creating uneven lengths).
Warp ends not overlapping. About 1.5 inches total width.

3. Secure crosses with choke ties. For a long warp, also secure 1 yard sections with ties.

Threading lease tied off
Tying Tips:
    • Use two ties per peg.
    • Don't catch the guide string in the ties.
    • Use different color ties to notate threading and raddle ends of the warp, also top and bottom of the warp.

4. The raddle is threaded first, so chain the warp starting at the threading cross end.
Dressing the Glimakra B2F Step 2: Loading the Raddle
Dressing the Glimakra B2F Step 4: Threading, Sleying, Lashing On
Dressing the Glimakra B2F Step 5: Tying Up the Lamms & Treadles
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Tuesday, September 05, 2023

A Raddle For My Table Loom

The first two warping adventures on my table loom have been front to back. The was how I learned to warp a loom, and it's the first method shown in Deborah Chandler's Learning To Weave. I later switched to warping back to front, but since I'm just reacquainting myself with weaving, starting at the beginning seems like a good idea. Plus, I need a raddle. 

A raddle is basically a yarn holder for warping back to front. It's purpose is to evenly distribute the yarn across the back beam and keep it at the proper width during the beaming process. Otherwise, the yarn will tend to bunch up and make a mess. 

Raddles need to be sized for the loom. They are easy enough to make, but the one I wanted is the "special raddle" shown in Peggy Osterkamp's Warping Your Loom & Tying On New Warps.


I bought the materials and Dan assembled it for me.


One tidbit; Lowe's didn't have enough #12 eye screws, so I ended up going to Home Depot for the rest. They are made by different manufacturers; one makes them from zinc, the other from stainless steel. So even though they are technically the same size, they are not actually the same size! That won't make a difference in using the raddle, but I thought I'd mention it in case anyone else decides to make one of these. 


The appeal of the eye screws is that after the yarn is distributed across the raddle, a rod is run through the eyes to keep the threads from jumping out! Yes, that happens and can make a mess of things. I used to use rubber bands, but I like this idea much better. 

I still need to get the rod and a way to attach it to my back beam, but it will be ready to go for my next warp.


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Saturday, January 19, 2008

Tying On To A B2F Warp

Last summer I did a blog post on how I tied on a new warp. (That post here.) I like to tie on because it lets me take advantage of a particular threading for as long as possible. Sometimes it involves a re-sleying for a different sett, or sometimes it involves a different treadle tie-up, but even with these it is a time saver.

I first learned how to tie on when I was warping front to back (f2b). When I warped f2b, my warp was tied to the back apron rod in bundles. Warping back to front (b2f) is a little different. The warp isn't cut for the back apron rod, rather the apron stick is slipped through the uncut loop at one end of the warp.

The end of my 1st warp looped around the back apron rod.
This makes tying on a little challenging. Once the weaving is cut off the loom, the remaining warp is no longer secured because it isn't tied to the apron rod. It can easily be pulled off. When I tie on a new warp, I'm careful to not pull the old warp ends off, but they do become very uneven from my pulling and tying. No matter how careful I am, I end up with uneven lengths of warp.

I was thinking about this as I finished weaving my advancing twill sample warp. My plan was to tie on a different size yarn and experiment with that. So to secure the old warp, I decided to see if I could weave in an inch or so of waste weft, close to the back apron rod to hold the warp in place.

To do this I needed tension on the warp, so I waited to cut off the woven fabric. First I pulled the lease sticks out, and then from the back of the loom, pushed the treadles down to make a tabby shed. It was pretty awkward, but I was able to weave in about four picks of a heavy yarn. I beat them down with a hair pick and then put the lease sticks back in the same way.

A few picks woven in behind the heddles.
I found that this helped stabilize the warp quite a bit; though not enough to prevent it from being pulled out if I tugged hard enough. Even so, it helped a lot. The next time I tie on, I'll weave in a bit more and that should do the trick.

© 2008 Leigh's Fiber Journal


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Saturday, October 06, 2007

Jack Loom Revisited

Motif for color inspiration.After all the research I did when I first got my countermarche loom, I decided that I wanted to take another look at my jack loom to see how well I could apply some of the things I learned. To do that, I needed to warp it again.

The project I decided on for this warp is a set of eight placemats. I wanted to match the motif pictured on the left. Happily I have all the colors in my stash: red, orange, yellow, green, light blue, medium blue, lavender, and pink. I also have plenty of natural cotton, all of these in 8/2.

After doing my preliminary calculations, I measured a six yard warp and began to warp the loom, back to front.

One of the first ideas I was able to apply, was a way to support the apron rod as I loaded the raddle. Prior to this, it was quite a balancing act; one at which I was usually pretty unsuccessful.

I used two apron rods from my 59 inch wide Glimakra, running them from the front to back beams on my Schacht Mighty Wolf. Onto these, I balanced the Schacht apron rod, with the warp on it, ready to load into the raddle.

View of raddle from the back of my jack loom.
Nifty little clamp.To keep the apron rod from sliding around, I used the same handy dandy little clamps that I found for 68 cents at Advanced Auto Parts last spring.

Although not pictured above, I finally figured out to use elastic pony tail holders to secure the raddle groups instead of rubber bands. My rubber bands are pretty old and tended to break easily.

So far so good.

© 2007 Leigh's Fiber Journal

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Monday, July 09, 2007

Warping the Glimakra: The 3 Duhs

By Leigh

Duh #1 - Putting on too wide a warp

Probably not the best project width to start with.
This is not a tremendously big deal, but I should know better than to try too many new things at once. The new loom should have been enough. I thought I was doing good to refrain from trying a fancy 8 shaft pattern, but I did allow myself to succumb to weaving something I'd never woven before, a blanket.

Duh #2 -Initially winding onto the cloth beam backwards


In this photo, it is wound on correctly. At first however, I had the apron cords going around the other way.

To the mechanically minded this probably would not have been a big deal, but to me it was a major panic. I had everything threaded and tied up and ready to weave. I thought I'd have to re-do it all! Fortunately, my DH looked calmly at the situation and started winding the beam until it unrolled the apron cords. He kept on winding and much to my amazement, it wound itself the correct way. If he hadn't been around it probably would have been a bigger duh because I would have untied the whole thing to correct it. Not something I would have enjoyed especially because of Duh #1.

I think what threw me off was the knee beam. My other loom doesn't have one and I'd never had to deal with one before. I'm assuming it's there to keep the cloth out of the way so that one can get one's knees under the loom.

Duh #3 - Tying up the "wrong" sets of lamms

"Wrong" here is a little relative. It has nothing to do with overall results, but everything to do with which side of the cloth I was going to look at while I was weaving. And this has to do with how the pattern draft is written and which way the shed is formed on the loom: rising or sinking.

My introduction to this entire concept took place shortly after I started to weave in 2000. I decided to weave a table runner using a pattern from Marguerite Davison's A Handweaver's Pattern Book. I was puzzled after I began weaving. While it looked pretty on the loom, it didn't look like the picture of the pattern I'd chosen. To my surprise, after I finished and cut it off the loom, there was the pattern I wanted, on the bottom! I soon learned that this was because all the drafts in this book are notated for sinking shed looms. My jack loom had a rising shed. That meant that if I wanted to look at the pattern while I was weaving, I needed to tie up the treadles according to the blank spaces in the draft, not the X's.

Usually tie-ups for rising shed looms such as jack looms, use O's to show the treadle tie-up. Sinking sheds such as counterbalance looms, use X's. The two drafts on the left will produce exactly the same woven pattern. While most modern weaving books show the rising shed tie-up, the older A Handweaver's Pattern Books (originally published in 1944 before jack looms came into popular use) uses X's.

But what about a countermarche loom, where part of the shed rises and the other part sinks? For my first treadle tie-up, I followed the instructions on the set-up video, which showed tying up the upper lamms first, and then tying up the bottom ones in the opposite pattern. However the video showed a simple plain weave, whereas I wanted a simple straight twill. What I didn't realize is that the short, upper lamms pull the shafts dow to sink the shed, while the long, lower lamms lift the shed because they are attached to the overhead jacks, which pull the shafts up. (Photos of this stuff on this post.)

Countermarche looms are usually considered rising shed looms for the sake of tying up the treadles. They do differ from jack looms in that every shaft has to be tied, but they can use the same rising shed drafts.

So what exactly did I do "wrong'? I switched which set of lamms I tied to. I tied the upper (sinking) lamms to the O's in the draft which were supposed to be rising. My pattern was upside down. I probably could have let this go and simply pressed on with my weaving. I was having problems with my shed however (more on that next time), so I decided to re-tie the entire treadle tie-up. I've often said that I learn more from my mistakes than from getting it right the first time. Believe me when I say that I won't do that again.

So there you have it. Looking on the bright side I have to say that I'm learning a lot.

Next ....... Adjusting the Shed


Related posts:
New Loom
Why A Countermarche?
Warping the Glimakra:
.....Adjusting the Loom With Texsolv
.....Winding On the Warp
.....Threading
.....Tying Up the Treadles
.....Adjusting the Shed
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Monday, July 02, 2007

Warping the Glimakra: Threading

By Leigh

The next step after winding the warp on, was the threading.

For some reason, I found threading the heddles on the Glimakra so much easier and faster than threading them on my Schacht Mighty Wolf.

As you can see below,

Shafts & heddles on the Schacht Mighty Wolf
the shafts on the Mighty Wolf are wooden frames which move up and down in steel tracks, which also hold them in place. The flat steel heddles reside on two metal bars within the shaft frame. For some reason, I always had difficulty keeping track of which heddle was on which shaft. I tried all sorts of tricks to keep this straight in my mind, but in the end, careful checking and rechecking was always the best answer. Because of this, I was more than a little worried that the task would be more difficult with 8 shafts.

Threading Texsolv heddlesHowever, with the Glimakra, I found keeping track of the shafts much, much easier. Perhaps it was because they simply hang freely from overhead and can be moved easily. I could use one hand to keep track of which shaft I was on, and the other to separate out heddles for threading. Granted, the heddles do not slide around as easily as on the Mighty Wolf, but that was only a minor adjustment on my part.

The other thing I found easier, was that because the heddles are flexible, the yarn could be easily poked through the heddle eye without a threading hook. This saved me lots of time because with a threading hook, I was forever dropping the darn thing and having to hunt to see if it had fallen into the jacks or was hiding under the treadles.

Of course, I did choose an easy threading pattern; a simple straight twill. I simply threaded the shafts in order, 1 through 8, repeat.

Peg (who BTW, recently started an excellent new weaving blog, click on her name to check it out) was curious about threading from the lease sticks in the raddle cross. For one who is usually quite camera happy, I didn't take any pix of this!!

You may recall from my last post, that this is a one cross b2f method, using only a raddle cross. After the warp is wound onto the warp beam, the cross remains held by the lease sticks, from which the heddles are threaded. My set up looked like this. All I had to do was to take the shafts off of the countermarche and I was ready to thread.

I first tried leaving the raddle in and simply picked out the raddle groups to thread in order. I found it easier however, to remove the raddle. All the threads are in order on the lease sticks, so by moving them close to the shafts, I could easily pick out the next warp end to be threaded. As I mentioned above, all this went quite quickly and was actually fun!

After the heddles were threaded, I put breast and knee beams back in place, and selected a reed.

Reed holder made of a large heavy PVC pipe.
My loom came with 5, 60 inch reeds and also this very clever home crafted reed holder. For sleying, I set the reed up as it was demonstrated in the Glimakra set-up video........

Sleying the reed.
Sleying the reed was also quick and easy. Warp ends were simply pulled down through the dents with the hook. When I was done, the hanging beater was put back on and the reed inserted.

The last step was tying onto the front apron rod. Usually I like to lash on, but this warp is so wide that I decided to tie it on the way I first learned (also demonstrated on the set-up video.) One tip I learned from the video was not to just tighten the knots, but to actually pull on the warp.

Tying onto the front apron rod by pulling the bouts.
The idea behind this is that simply tightening the knots only serves to stretch the warp, not actually tension it. At any rate, I found this method much easier than I remembered. This washable acrylic knitting yarn is quite stretchy, so I had to pull it up several times. Tension was tested at the cross. Once it felt even, the square knots were completed.

The test of how well I actually did is yet to come. Next .............. the dreaded treadle tie-up!

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