Glimåkra Assistance

I received an email from the Townsend Guild (sent to a few of us members) asking if anyone was able to help complete the re-construction of a loom at a Maryville Elementary School.  I was either the first or perhaps the only one to reply that I would be able to help.

Turns out the loom is a large Glimåkra Standard loom that is a little over 20 years old and from initial pictures appeared to be all there.  It had spent some time gathering dust, and many pieces were stored, all mixed, up in a large bin.  There was a couple of bags of bits and pieces and a good range of shuttles and bobbins.

The lucky recipient of this loom is an Art Teacher (Yvonne) at the school. She is setting up the loom in a corner of her room so she can demonstrate how the weaving her students are undertaking in her class can be directly related to weaving on any kind of loom.

The installation instructions are in the red folder of the above photo and are fairly minimal after setting out the main components.  Yvonne's husband had done a good job getting it as far as can be seen in the photo and after seeing the instructions I can quite understand how the progress stalled.

My first job was to have a good look at all the pieces and see what was there/not.  It is an 8 harness model and everything checked out for that.  Unfortunately at least 4 (maybe more) heddle frames had been stored in the bin and had consequently slipped off into a pile of texsolv heddles on the bottom. Not a problem initially as there were 5 sets of tied off heddles in a bag so I'll be setting it up initially as a 4 shaft model.  After untangling more can be added.

After attaching the treadles and lamms I added the texsolve heddles to the heddle bars and hung the first four.  Having never used texsolv cord or heddles before it was a new but pleasant experience.  It is certainly better than having to knot nylon chord the number required on this loom and I haven't even made it to the tie up.

Day one finished

 After adjusting the height of the heddle bars the next task is to attach them to the upper and lower lamms.  I decided to call it a day at this stage as the rain was due and I still had an hour and a half driving to get home.  

I''ll be heading up in a couple of days to finish the 'construction' part of it and then tie up the treadles.  I'm working in completely new territory for that as my looms are either counterbalance or jack looms. I've never had anything that goes both up and down for each treadle.  The instructions are a limited but luckily there is a wealth of information on the web and I think I see a way ahead that will have the loom tied up for tabby or twill.  I'll then dress the loom so that Yvonne can begin weaving.

More to follow.