I occasionally get emails from folks looking for help with inkle
weaving through my website, and I have to say, it's always a thrill to know that
someone found info here to be of use in their own ventures. One such
person was Patricia McKinney, whom I helped get started on her inkle loom
early in the summer of 2005. She's been doing great, I must say!
Another fiber addict recruited for the cause... Anyway, after a month or
two, she emailed me a picture of a loom she wanted to start weaving on, wanting
to know if I had any tips for her. I responded back right away with, where
did you get that?! Is it an antique that you will work on, or a
reproduction?! Wow! I want one!
Turns out that Pat and her husband Rudy do both French and
Indian War and Revolutionary War
reenactment. Rudy participates with
Roger's Rangers
for their French and Indian War work,
a group of colonial men who fought for the British Crown against
the French and Indians. In his Revolutionary War work, he is a scout for
71st Highland
Regiment of Foot, a Scottish
unit that fought to keep the colonies under British rule, (OK, I guess somebody
has to be the British for the re-enactments to work out!) and he also sometimes
plays an Eastern longhunter, who were explorers who paved the way for settlers
coming into Kentucky and Tennessee. Pat and Rudy have the
elusive June 1993 magazine
Early American Life, a much-requested
reprint of a special newsstand-only issue in 1985, called Early American Life
Crafts. This issue has the article, "A c.1780 Tape Loom: How to Make It and Use
It," by Jean Creznic, and contains a construction design and brief instructions on how to use a tape
loom modeled on one found in the Hershey Museum of American Life in Hershey,
Pennsylvania. Pat sent me my own copy (more than once, too, thanks a
million, Pat!), it turns out that back issues are no longer available due to a
2003 bankruptcy and restructuring the magazine went through. Thank
goodness Pat and Rudy still had the issue! Rudy made one for Pat, and that
was what she sent a picture of to me. I'm getting the idea that Rudy has
been making a "few" of these looms these days, the one he made for me in cherry,
seen above,
is simply exquisite. I love it! He can be reached by email
here, if you'd like to inquire for your
own. I asked for mine in unadorned cherry as more relevant for my
reenactment time period, but the article shows a typical early American painted
and decorated finished loom, sort of Pennsylvania Dutch barn medallion style. I started weaving on this loom mid-August, and I am fascinated by
the possibilities. It is so interesting
to me to learn a new tool, and how the hands train themselves to adapt
efficiently to new techniques. I can tell I will be putting some serious
time in on this loom, and CROFT wants me to demonstrate
with it at their events,
too. At least it's 100-odd years closer in form than my Schacht inkle
loom, though I am currently trying to sweet-talk Rudy into some other, and
older, designs! (15/16/17th Century Box Loom, anyone?)
So here's my first warp, from a few angles. In the first
shot, you can see the warp reel and the take-up reel very well, and the current
braking arrangement, as well as into the interior of the box. The warping
reel is removable, you just pull out the two little skewer-like dowels, and the
reel lifts out. The second picture shows the loom from the other
direction, and I've started to weave a bit. You can also see the lovely
little shuttle Rudy provided with the loom, with the preferred tapered beating
edge as well. This was a really nice touch, the article didn't specify
shuttle tips for some reason. The last picture is taken from my point of
view while weaving, and I've woven enough to feed the finished end of the tape
into the take-up slot and attach it to the take-up reel. Nifty arrangement,
I can see winding on a ton of yardage for trim.
I don't have much experience weaving on rigid heddle type looms,
but I found this to be surprisingly different from weaving on my inkle looms.
On inkle, I tend to weave under pretty high tension, and so have to beat
correspondingly firmly. In the case of this style tape loom, because the weaver holds the warp under tension by hand, as you can
see in the last picture, tensioning is a whole different experience. It
felt at first very loosey-goosey to me, but as I continued, I found that high
tension wasn't really as important as consistent tension. Don't get
me wrong, I'll still be working with relatively high tension on the inkle looms,
it's just not as necessary on the tape loom, though I guess it would depend on
the finished effect the weaver wants. In addition, the motion of raising the warp by
hand up and down on the rigid heddle felt (and looked!) very dynamic to me after
years of inkle weaving where the warp stays relatively horizontal. As you
can also see in the last picture, I ended up bracing the loom against the edge
of my cutting mat to keep it from sliding forward. This will present an
interesting challenge in demonstration: I'll need a bit more room to
operate this loom effectively. On the other hand, I can sit upright at a
comfortable table height pretty well, and the box structure is amazingly
convenient for holding small items, like spare shuttles and small scissors,
while I weave, and for stowing the working shuttle when I'm not. Anyone
else ever had their shuttle fall out of the warp of their inkle loom while in
transit and yank the weaving out of shape? That won't happen so much on
this loom.
So, onto discoveries and drawbacks. The obvious drawback
is of course that the weaver is limited in the width of the warp by the spaces
available in the rigid heddle. This one has 27 spaces total, 13 holes and
14 slots, and with a warp of 5/2 cotton, I got roughly 5/8" wide finished tape.
Doesn't bother me, but the width limit is relevant. On the other hand, one
could still weave trim and other decorative fringes as well, the take up slot
and reel are wide enough for the extra fibers. The discovery didn't happen
until I actually started weaving, and is probably more obvious to more
experienced rigid heddle weavers. Because of how the brake arrangement
functions, you have to wind the warp on from under the warp reel and then back
over the top, as you can see in the first picture. This makes the warp
run at an angle, down from the heddle holes to under the bottom of the warp
reel. I think the warp should run more horizontally, from the heddle holes
to over the top of the warp reel, which would also help with achieving better
sheds while weaving. I was thinking that the brake arms should move around to the
other side of the reel cogs, so you can wind the reels in the other direction.
When I looked in Evelyn Neher's Inkle, I found some pictures of old tape
looms from the same region that seem to use that arrangement as well. I
plan to take more of a look at rigid heddle weaving in general, now. In
our back and forths about using the loom, I told Pat that I bet the person who
designed this loom wasn't a weaver, because as soon as you start to weave, you
realize there's something funky about the brake arrangement, and she agreed.
Rudy has also proposed another solution: to turn the warping reel over and
move that brake to the other side of the box where there's room to place it in
front of the cog, I'll take him up on it as soon as I can part with the loom
again for long enough! I think he plans to make this change on future
looms as well, and we're talking about possibly lengthening the box to make it
so that both brakes would fit on the same side from the other direction.
I don't have much yet in the way of tips for weaving on the
reproduction
loom. My own errors in weaving technique have only shown me a couple
things so far, I need time to make more mistakes! For the first warp, I
pre-measured and cut it using a couple of c-clamps to wind onto, my warping
board is still in storage at my parent's house. I then wound on the warp
front to back, that is, I threaded the heddle first, and then pulled the warp
through it to tie to the reel and then wind it on. I was taught to dress
floor looms this way, the heddle helps undo tangles and even out winding tension
when you have to wind a warp by yourself. So what I didn't realize in this
case was that the heddle spreads out the warp threads slightly wider than the take up
reel (duh) and so while I was watching the warp go through the heddle from the
front while reaching blindly around behind the heddle to wind the reel, the
outside edges were actually binding around the cog core. Easily fixed, but
it struck me as funny because it happened because of habits I developed for
other types of looms. My first clue that I would need to re-think a few
assumptions, or at least keep an open mind! On Pat's loom, she tells me
she went right to winding the warp directly onto the reel, while it was removed
from the loom, and then threading forward through the heddle. I'm trying
this next, (she says she's going to try my way next) and I suspect that it will
be the more convenient way to dress this loom!
In the picture on the left above, you can see my next error:
when I wound too much of the finished tape onto the take up reel, I didn't give
myself enough room to effectively beat in the next few shots, it made me try to
beat in the weft too close to the curve where I hold the tape, resulting in this
ridged effect. I see this happen sometimes in inkle weaving too, when weavers
advance the warp a bit too far while weaving, but it was much more pronounced
here. My first tape has a couple
of these spots! I'm also curious to see what effect the brake adjustment
will have on the warp movement. I'm hoping it will make it so I don't have
to angle the warp up and down so sharply to change sheds, and maybe that will
also help mitigate this ridging effect. In the next picture you can see that my
selvedges aren't stellar, and I found that it was pretty easy to drop outside
threads between shots, I think because of how sharply the width of the tape
narrows from the heddle to the finished tape. It's easy to miss the
outside threads in the up and down warp movement, I'm guessing the brake adjustment and
accompanying warp "leveling" will impact this as well. And of course, it
will definitely help for me to put some time in on getting used to holding the tension by
hand while I weave. It really is a strange sensation for me.
When I first started thinking about the brake function issue of
the reproduction loom's design, I decided to send an email to the museum to see
if I could get a picture of the extant artifact. Amy Bischof, curator at the Hershey Museum, graciously forwarded
these pictures along of the tape loom they have on exhibit there, that the
article says its design is based on. Doesn't look very similar at first
glance, does it? However, the function is classic, and I noted with
satisfaction the positions of the brakes. All in all, I can see how one
could go from pictures of this loom to the design the article ended up with,
especially if the designer wasn't a weaver, or was a very new one. This
one is much more robust, I assume as a result of being a home-fashioned object
of use. I actually went off on a little mental tangent in thinking along
those lines, how many of our tools do we make anymore? In my house, none.
I buy them. I actually walked around the house looking. What few
small tools I make are all related to my reenactment, and can't be bought
commercially, or I would, and are usually temporary, like a hole-punching trough
for bookbinding. I have a vague memory from childhood that my Grandpa, who
was raised on a farm in Kentucky, used to cut tool handles by hand, like for the
axe and mallet, but Dad bought axe handles from the lumber store. Grandpa
could lay cane brakes for the garden, too, but eventually switched to store
bought fencing rolls. I wonder what things I could make for myself that
would fill this same kind of niche? I'll try and look for ways from now
on, it would be an interesting study. It reminds me that for some
historical crafts, you have to make your own period tools, too, to get the full
understanding of the true process in period. As a reenactor, I know this,
but still manage to forget sometimes, shame on me.
I also found a copy of the book Tape Looms Past and Present
(Second Edition) by
Bonnie Weidert on Abebooks, and it was
interesting to get her perspectives. Besides being the only title I've
ever heard of devoted exclusively to tape looms, I'd say this book is also perfect for
those who have little or no other experience in narrow-ware work, and there are
some good ideas on tips and tricks, like the use of leader cords for the warping
reel. There's also a brief overview of tape-weaving in history, and many
excellent photos of various historical tape looms, as well as some inspiring
reproductions. She has included
several pages of sample drafts in color for the beginning weaver, I was pleased
to notice that the nomenclature for noting the draft is the same as for inkle
weaving, it seems a natural cross-over. Ms. Weidert also hosts a website
for tape weaving, www.tapelooms.com, that
covers a broad range of topics for the aspiring tape-weaver. I have joined
their forums myself, and hope to learn much from them. The book is
available directly from Ms. Weidert at her site, as well, for those who want
their own copy.