Glimåkra Day 2

Today I popped up to Maryville again to work on Yvonne's Glimåkra loom.  The previous visit was to put everything in place to connect treadles to lamms to heddle frames/bars.  It had gone smoothly but I wasn't so sure about today as this mechanism had a 100% more complicated shedding action (for every heddle that goes down, the rest go up, etc).  This action produces a wonderful shed but is quite different to the counter-balance and jack looms that I am used to.

The first step was to check that the heddles and reed (in the beater frame) were in the right place - easily confirmed by taking a thread from back to breast beam through a heddle eye at each end.  It turned out that the first day set up was pretty close.

Then came the connection of upper and lower lamms to the texsolve cords from both the lower heddle bars and the center of the horizontal jacks. Following a basic guide to countermarche tie up I was able to set the loom up relatively easily.  I moved the bench inside the back of the loom and could sit comfortably while I did this.

Once everything was connected I moved to the treadles.  For now, and with 4 shafts connected, I tied up for a straight tabby and twill which will allow Yvonne to get the hang of weaving and be a little creative as she gets more comfortable with the loom.

Tie-up required sitting (again) in the back of the loom, but given the dimensions it is pretty easy.  New to me was that every treadle had to have both up and down lamms connected.  With the aid of a quickly hand drawn diagram I completed it with only one error (found when I tested the treadles and one just refused to move - a wrong connection from treadle to the next lamm vice one directly above that hole). Beginner error for sure.

Simple tie up for the first attempt

 Once the tie up (and corrections) were out of the way I only had to adjust some of the earlier connections (texsolv again making that very easy). Then add in the apron bars back and front and adjust them. So for this visit the work was done.

A working loom

 Next and last visit will be to set up a warp and make sure everything is working smoothly before handing it over to Yvonne.  She has already purchased some wonderful colored and variegated yarns that will make perfect place mats and table runners.