Sunday, February 28, 2010

Uh oh! Look who moved into the guest bedroom today.

It's a Union Custom Loom. This one has been around for a few years, possibly since they first started making them in 1918. The guy I bought it from had rescued it from an old barn and cleaned it up and reassembled it. It's going to take some fiddling around and a little more tender loving care before it's up and running again. You guys know me though, a woodworking and fiber project combined is my favorite.
P.S. Future Guests, I'll need a little forewarning to shuffle things around and set up the bed for you;)

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

What a nice loom! Even though your lomm worked very weel I do beleave you can you do more with this loom. And faster too. / Ulf

Lars said...

Faster would be good, This one is also a lot sturdier.

Anonymous said...

And here I thought you had gotten another animal of some sort. Then I remembered the loom. Yup. Another animal.

Anonymous said...

Wow Lars!
Ja, das ist etwas anderes als die Gitarrensaiten...
Du sagst. er steht im Gästezimmer? - Sehr reizvoll... ;) Ich denke darüber nach...

Lars said...

Anon, loom, loon, not too much difference;P

Rita, gibt's noch Platz für ein Gast,ist aber jetzt ein Bisschen enger;)

Anonymous said...

Congratulation to your webshop, I´m sure it will be an success/ Ulf

Lars said...

Thanks Ulf! I just need to get busy and weave up some rugs to have for sale, and learn how to improve the web page;)

Anonymous said...

How does your new loom works? One thing that´s different with a loom with a beamer (?) is that you insert the rag, changes shed (?) with the heardle and then you bang with the beamer. It´s not obvious that you do so but that how ai was tought. / Ulf

Lars said...

Ulf,
there is a PDF file on-line of the original operating manual that would have come with the loom in 1918.
It's pretty much how you say, but more detailed.
http://www.cs.arizona.edu/patterns/weaving/other/orc_loom.pdf
1 inch = about 2.5 cm, so, they are recommending warping 12 threads per inch/4.8 per cm. I find that this makes a thinner rug than I like. I am now trying 10 per inch/ 4 per cm, but find this also too thin. I will next try 8 per inch/ 3.2 per cm. American taste in rag rugs tends to lean more towards a thicker rug.

Lars said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Lars said...

This is the link, the other one got cut off ..

http://www.cs.arizona.edu/
patterns/weaving/other
/orc_loom.pdf

Anonymous said...

3,2 threads per cm sounds fine to me and you can adjust the thickness by inserting (there must be another word for that) 1 or 2 rags. But it also depends if you want the warp threads to be seen or not. If the warp threads are seen between the rags you can make the rug chechered by warping a striped warp, for example 10 cm white and 10 cm white etc. Good luck and us see the result

Anonymous said...

10 cm in color and 10 cm in white, it should be

Lars said...

I thought so;D