Sunday, June 27, 2010

I have actually been doing stuff, even though I have not been posting.

I finally used up all the warp that I had wound onto the loom. I had a lot of problems though with the warp tension going more and more uneven as I progressed. Rather than saying that it was the inexperienced weavers fault, I decided that the 90 year old worn out loom parts were to blame and decided to replace this particular piece. The sectional warping beam.
I did not want to pay the price for Maple as was probably used for the original, so I bought Poplar. Milled it to size and nailed and glued it up.
I really wanted to do something more like the metal section dividers of the Lerclerc loom, but could not find anything readily available to make that happen, something along the lines of a large stainless steel fence staple.
I decided to go along with the original design until I find what I would rather have, retrofitting shouldn't be too much of a problem. So, 3/8" dowel sharpened in the pencil sharpener and then cut to length, x76. When was the last tiome one of you sharpened 76 pencils in a row?
A light sanding with 22o grit sandpaper, x 76.
And now it's time to quit and drink beer for the rest of the evening.
I did contact Clayton Boyer though, an incredible designer and builder of wooden gear clocks.
His wife is a fiber artist and he has designed some items for her. I challenged him to design plans for a specific piece that I would dearly love to have, but don't have the mechanical abilities necessary to design myself. A geared device that can twist 2 strands of rags together and, in the same operation, with the use of only one crank, then wind it into a ball. We'll see if he can come up with such a plan. If anyone can, it's him. He's a wooden gear and device genius.
That then leaves me with the question; "can I follow his plans"?