I was wondering if making heddle bars from dowel rod was a good idea? Would be on a 60" wide home built loom in the Swedish style and use 3/4" hard maple. Any thoughts? I guess one of the  challenges would be securing the rod and aligning any holes for drilling across the length of the bar. Something that being rectangular has benefits.

Comments

Sun, 03/04/2012 - 05:52

kerstinfroberg

Isn't a rectangular section also stiffer? You don't want shaft bars to be too wide, either. My only available loom has 24 x 11 mm shafts, and they are on the thick side, compared to my big looms.

Sun, 03/04/2012 - 10:59

ReedGuy

Kerstin, I suppose it would be stiffer in the vertical, which counts the most. I understand they are fairly thin from what I see on looms of this type. I'll probably stick with tradition. :) In this case though 3/4" maple dowel would be much stiffer. I can stand on 3/4" maple dowel and it don't break. And I don't have to be delicate about it. ;)

Sun, 03/04/2012 - 10:46

Dawn McCarthy

My concern with dowel would be the bowing at 60" wide.  The stack of multiple shafts at 3/4 may be more significant also.  Let us know if it does work.

Dawn

Sun, 03/04/2012 - 11:17

ReedGuy

There would only be 8 shafts, I figured as long as the diameter was less than that of the jacks and upper lamms it could work. With rounded dowel there is less friction on neighboring shaft cords/heddles as they pass when opening a shed. This of course could be remedied by rounding over rectangular shafts. The challenge would be to get all the holes in alignment for like the locking pin and  along with any others along the length of the dowel. The best way would be to clamp the dowel and run a centre line up the dowel with a marking gauge like at the bottom of this photo.

Might as well throw this in of the finished cabinet. :)

On to other things. ;)

Sun, 03/04/2012 - 14:19

Dawn McCarthy

Reed Guy your work is wonderful!  I am sure the end result will not only be effective but also aesthetically pleasing!  Hope you post lots of photos of the loom when finished

Dawn

Sun, 03/04/2012 - 15:43

SallyE (not verified)

Why do you want to use a dowel?   As Dawn said, the bowing is likely to be a problem.   It does use less wood, maybe, but the shafts will need to about 3 times thicker than a with a flat piece of wood.   My ARM loom has harness bars and lams that are only 3/8 inch thick, but they are 1.5 inches wide.  That gives them the needed strengh exactly where they need it - given their horizontal placement.  You may only plan for 8 harnesses now, but why build that limit in?

Your wood working is beautiful!  Do you cut that inlay yourself?  Wonderful!

 

Sun, 03/04/2012 - 16:15

ReedGuy

Just asking your opinions. ;) Doesn't mean it will be done with dowels in the end. Being as this is wood, I can make future upgrades. So 8 now could be 16, 10 years from now. :)

Sally, yes all the inlay is my own work. The wood around the medallion is butternut, the rays are walnut, birch, cherry. The edge inlay is birch and walnut. The main cabinet is cherry. I never carved the leaves, got those from Lee Valley and they are cherry. Here's the rest of the cabinet.

 

I carved the legs as well. There is color variation in the wood because there is some narrow pieces edge glued and out northern black cherry is slightly different than that in PA. The hips by th elegs there are PA cherry, a more eveness to the color. Our local cherry can have color change from ring to ring. Over time the color all evens out as it oxidizes. There are glass shelves inside, hard to see except for a line by the door handles.

 

Sun, 03/04/2012 - 16:25

SallyE (not verified)

How did you carve the legs?  By hand with a chisel, or on your table saw?

My Dad used to do woodworking, but not as well as you do it.   He taught me to use a cup of washing soda mixed in a gallon of water to wash the wood with.  That opened the grain and made the wood all take the stain the same.   He did that when using new wood and old wood together in the same piece.  (Obviously, this doesn't work with oak!)

Beautiful!

Sun, 03/04/2012 - 19:33

ReedGuy

Did up a template and drew the outline on one face and turned to an ajacent face, drew it out there. Cut on the bandsaw. Mounted on the lathe to round the foot. Drew centre lines down each square face. Drew reference lines on all four sides where the flat begeins to taper toward the foot. Then to the table belt sander to round over the corners to the centre lines. Finnished up with an inflatable sanding cylinder run off a #2 tapered lathe chuck. For the hips, the round over was sanded on the table belt sander by eye. Actually, the hole shoot'n match was by eye. A groove is cut on the back side of the hips to mount to the plinth apron and the attach to the legs. Legs attached with steel leg braces into the hips, table leg screw into the legs. Some woodworking is like producing art when you don't have computer CNC machines. ;) I was limited as to how much cherry I had on hand, so I had to work with it the best I could without buying more.

Sun, 03/04/2012 - 23:56

kerstinfroberg

I have now measured my two different shafts (I mean shafts from tow different makers). Imeasured very un-scientifically - measuring tape and eyes - thus there may be mistakes as to possible fractions of millimeters.

Manufactured by Öxabäck:

(that is what happens if you do not put the locking pins in, but cut the warp off)

And manufactured by AVL:

Sorry - it is way too complicated to convert millimeters to fractions of inches... (why can't you all be decimal? us Europeans did that more than a hundred years ago, even if the Brits did not actually *do* it until recently...)

 

Mon, 03/05/2012 - 03:20

ReedGuy

I can use either, I'm bi-lingual. :D Sorry, but have to smile once in awhile. ;) Actually, the Americans have it on the books. But, being as they are a stubborn lot, it never took. ;) Interestingly though they use it in science.

I actually have calipres with graduations in 10th's of inches, even as fine as 1000's which is silly when when working with wood because a change in the weather means a change in dimensions. ;)

Thanks Kerstin for the measurements. :)

Mon, 03/05/2012 - 11:00

Joanne Hall

The other issue is the weight.  You need to avoid making them heavy.  Choose a light weigth wood.

Joanne

Mon, 03/05/2012 - 11:26

ReedGuy

They should be quite light Joanne as my lower lamms are pretty heavy, heavier than the upper lamms and shafts when you look at volume of wood. The lower lamms are 1-1/2" x 1-1/8" x 67", upper lamms are 1-1/4" x 3/4" x 50" and I'm going with 1-3/8" x 3/8" x 64" for the shaft bars.

113 in3 for lower lamms vs 113 in3 for upper lamms and shaft bars combined.

:)

Tue, 03/06/2012 - 17:10

Joanne Hall

Kerstin gave you a nice description of Swedish shaft and lamm sizes.  Is there a reason that you are making them thicker?

There are two reasons for making them thin.  One is that the shafts need to be as close together as possible to make nice sheds and make the tie-up easy.  The other reason is that there is no reason to move that much lumber up and down.

You might consider making parts for four shafts and weaving with them to determine what sizes will work.   Remember, it is the weaving that will tell you if the sizes and weights of the parts will work.

When I designed the countermarch parts for the Julia loom, I started with factory parts for a larger loom.  Then we made thinner ones two times before arriving at the right sizes.  And I put on a warp and wove with each new version before I could determine what to do next.

Joanne

Thu, 03/08/2012 - 03:54

ReedGuy

Joanne, the dimensions I used for my shafts are pretty much the same in thickness and width as Kerstin showed. She showed them for two types of looms. The length of mine is 62" not 64" as I stated before. If things need adjusting I'm sure I'll find out along the way. :)

Also, with like building anything the longer the span the larger the stock is required because of sag and strength issues.