Back to the drawing board.

After attempting to warp on following the original instructions, from some 80 years ago, as well as missing some loom parts and having to guess at what they might look like, I ended with tangled and broken threads. I decided to do some more thinking and visited my friend the internet. There I found that most people with a sectional warp beam loom use a detached spool rack and a warp tensioning box. Okay. Into the woodshop to see what scraps I had on hand to come up with these items. Voila...
The woodshop is getting low on scraps but I managed to find the pieces to come up with a spool rack, of course I had to dismantle my original home built loom to use it's leg assembly. I had an assortment of wood doweling, and some T-pins. The base of the tensioning box is oak and the side piece is poplar. The idea is that the warp threads come into the box through 1 set of pins and wrap over and under the dowels in a series that adds the right amount of tension, they then feed out through another set of pins and on to the warp beam in the right order.

It seems to be working.

The overview of this set up from the back of the loom.

Now, I need to finish winding on and thread the heddles and sley the reed so I can get on with some weaving.