The 'unknown' brand upright loom is now assembled and ready to go. I say unknown as while I had previously thought it was a Dryad loom, after much searching and viewing of pictures of Dryads there are three fundamental differences. This one has the pedals hinged at the front, the reed/beater mechanism is a hinged vice sliding one, and the winding handles on both beams have 5 vice 4 spokes. It is a very well made loom with fittings way beyond what you would think have been made on a one off home loom. So I will keep searching and will be both checking the library at the next guild meeting (for old local magazines/books that might have photo's) and asking the members if they have seen it or similar. I bought it from the Wairarapa, but that doesn't mean a lot as it could have moved anywhere before there (around NZ or from overseas). I'll also go back to the person I bought it off to see if he can recall any other detail of the previous owner (he was storing it for her but in the end she did not want it back).
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| The loom all ready to go |
The loom rather dominates the small spare room, but there is room to have it and all the wool and space to get to the window/balcony door - just! We did find that by removing the reed from the beater frame and sliding it out - the depth once pushed against the wall is just over the half the full depth and allowed us to put a single bed in the room when I had my granddaughter staying over.
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| Rug on the loom |
The rug I have put on the loom is the one my father was working on before he passed away over a decade ago. It was originally on his counterbalance loom. I have that - but because it would have been bigger than this loom (taking up nearly the whole room!), it is in pieces in the garage ready to be packed for America. Before we took it off the loom my daughter Sarah and I wove a couple of rows so we understood how he was weaving this tufted rug, then we carefully removed and rolled it. Putting it back on this loom presented a few challenges, the biggest of which was that the warp yarn (commercial 2 ply) has a mean twist to it so I spend quite a bit of time separating each bundle. Once done though the front to back dressing went smoothly and it was soon on and tensioned.
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| Friction brake on warp beam |
When I first put it together (after buying it - to make sure everything was there) I could see that there was a friction brake set-up on the warp beam, but couldn't work out the details of how it all went together. That wasn't helped by the fact that, it turns out, there were a couple of bolts missing. In the interim two years I searched for photo's of a similar loom with the brake visible (didn't find any) or just friction brake mechanisms in general. That helped and this time, with some logic (based on the placement of the anchor bolt and adjustable tension bolts (there was no orginal spring - so I have bungy cords) and testing I have a very workable brake and release mechanism.
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| Ratchet and pawl on cloth beam |
As mentioned above the pieces of this loom are all very well made and seem custom designed for a loom vice adapted from something else. Plus the attention to detail is great - in the photo above the brass ratchet mechanism and the turned spokes on the winding handle of the cloth beam are just two examples.
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| The rug so far |
With about 4 feet of rug completed and 2 or 3 feet to go, I plan to modify the pattern (somewhat random colour blocks with some recurring star groupings) to a pattern to 'top off' this design and show the transition from my father's work to mine but keep the theme of the blocks going. I'll be drawing up a graph paper sample and painting it to check my design before doing much more (I do have one more row to square off the blocks that are only half done on the visible top row).
