Equipment, Cranbrook countermarch loom, 45 inches wide, 8 shafts, 10 treadles.

Current project, coverlet for my father, Summer & Winter structure, modified Nine Snowballs & Four Roses with double Pine Tree Border (page 176-177 of Carol Stricklers's American Woven Coverlets), six blocks.  Warped at 43 inches wide.  Coverlet is being woven in two halves lengthwise to fit my loom, resulting in a very asymmetrical warping.  Example, shaft 8 has all the heddles on the left side.  Shaft 7 has almost all the heddles on the right side.

Tie up, skeleton to get the necessary treadles, need 12, I have 10.  The tie up is correct for the countermarch as discussed in several threads already on this forum.  It worked fine for a simplified, but narrower and symmetrical practice piece for this project.  Right two peddles tied up as tabby (call those treadles 9 and 10).  I did that because I found the treadling was too hard if I tied up the left two treadles.  Treadles 7 and 8 are the background.  1-6 are pattern.

OK, issues, two, one seems easy to solve, if inelegant, one much harder.

Issue one, treadle.  It seems that since not all treadles are tied to all shafts that the back 6 harnesses drop a lot.  As a result, treadle 9 rises a lot (like I can't reach it!) when 9 & 10 are tied to give good tabby shed.  If I add weight to either the lams for the back shift shafts or treadle 9 the heights even out a lot in the rest position and I get better clearance between the lams and treadle 9 with shed open.  Seems inelegent, but it works.  Any reason not to go that way?

Issue two, the one I've spent two evenings on now, uneven side to side shed with the pattern treadles.  If I set the ties to get a nice looking shed on the right side, the left is all messed up.  And vice versa.  It seems worse with treadle one (left most) which pulls down on the left side upper lam and has the most uneven heddles on shaft 8 causing it to be particularly cockeyed.  Shaft 7 is cockeyed the opposite way.  I dont think hanging weight on the shaft will pull it even without going crazy and making for a hard shed.  Might it work to flip the treadles so the background shafts are 1&2 and the pattern shafts are 3-8, thus pulled more centrally? 

Other solutions (short of reengineering the loom, which is definitely in the back of my mind)?

Thanks,

Jeff Anderson

Livonia, MI

Comments

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 07:17

Grethe

If "shaft 8 has all the heddles on the left side.  Shaft 7 has almost all the heddles on the right side" you will need to have a few empty heddles on opposite side, so the shaft are balanced.

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 09:42

ReedGuy

Jeff, like Grethe said, you need some heddles on opposite ends to ballance the shafts. The tie up cords on the upper bar and lower bar give the tension to the shaft, but if there are no heddles on the opposite sides your going to get the shafts tilting a bit. Put some empty heddles on those ends. Both ends on all the shafts should have a few on the ends anyway and not all in the middle of the shafts. I think you'll find this will solve a lot of the issue.

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 12:46

jander14indoor (not verified)

Good suggestion, but I recognized that before I started and placed empty heddles on the ends of the completely uneven shafts.

So no joy there.

Thanks,

 

Jeff

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 13:25

ReedGuy

The adjacent shafts aren't by chance tangling into the outter heddles are they? Do your shaft bars have end holes to run a cord through and down the length of the bar to the opposite end to make the heddles behave? Sometimes the end heddles can slip out if this cord or some other method isn't used to secure the heddles to the bars. And is the lower lamm tie-up to the lower shaft bars centred, so they doen't tip more one way? Press your treadles and see if there is any tipping in the shafts. Find the centre of the warp back at the beam and make sure the tie-up goes up to that centre. Even if the shafts have uneven heddle arrangement, work from the beam where the centre of the warp is and follow that up to the shafts. Tie-up there. That's what I always do no matter how the shafts have the heddles distributed. And do you tie-up with the shafts all even and level with a craddle, and a locking pin in the jacks so they are even to? I don't know anything about a Cranbrook, just mostly a Glimakra. On an 8 shaft overshot doubleweave, you should only need 10 treadles, the other two do the tabby. Your tension may be a bit high to, should be easy tromping with just leg weight.

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 17:20

jander14indoor (not verified)

Cranbrook shafts have eyes at the end that either the upper cords or the floating lam connect to so the heddles can't move.

Doesn't look like there is any tangling between the shafts.

The Cranbrook has a lower pivoting lam.  Treadles connect to that lam along its length. But the pull is transferred from the shafts from the center (screw eye ensures centering) of the loom up through the pivoting bars at the top to lift the shafts evenly.

But the upper floating lams don't pivot off the sides of the loom.  Instead the upper lams connect to either end of the shaft and the treadles connect to the lam directly and HAVE to be off center (thus the comment about reengineering...). 

For a diagram of the Cranbrook, see: http://www.schachtspindle.com/instructions/weaving/CranbrookLoomAssembly0313.pdf

I'll try different tension.

Thanks,

Jeff

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 20:31

debmcclintock

I sometimes use a dummy tie up on the problem lamm on the far end to help compensate on the tilted lift. It's duplicate but helps straighten the lift. I've never done a skeleton tie up so can't offer a specific fix.
Sun, 03/23/2014 - 20:51

ReedGuy

Are the lamm cords crossed? Not only that, but when you tie up the cords, make sure they all go up past each lamm the same way and don't form S loops from lower to upper lamm. If they do this, it will restrict to up and down. Also, the trouble shooter suggests the warp is not centred. Doesn't matter how the shafts and upper lamm appears centred. It's the warp. It is part of the counterweight.

But I now think the main trouble is having warp to one side on those two shafts. How is it the draft is cockeyed to the sides of those two shafts?

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 20:48

jander14indoor (not verified)

OK, problem resolved.  Of course since I tried two things at once, not sure which fixed it, probably both.

First, I flipped the background and pattern treadles around so the uneven pattern shafts are pulled from the central treadles instead of the extreme. Hmm, not sure I'm using the terms right.

Second, since that required almost a complete re-tie up I took everything back to ground starting state.  No adjustments.  All tieups as per the MADELYN VAN DER HOOGT article. 

Pulled locking pins, shafts dropped very little and hung even, peddles hung even. 

No added weights.

Floors of all the sheds look good, tops a little rough, but plenty of room to pass the shuttle.  I always seem to cause more problems 'perfecting' the shed, I'm going to try as is and see how it goes.

Wish me luck.

Hmm, about the suggestion of tying up a dummy or duplicate.  Not sure how to do that with this skeleton tie up without at some point asking a shaft to go two ways at once or needing an extra treddle (which I don't have, thus the skeleton).  Have to noodle on that some.

Thanks,

Jeff

Sun, 03/23/2014 - 21:15

ReedGuy

Also, when blending drafts they should have the same number of ends. Or the scale of one or the other has to be altered. Or the other is repeated to give the same warp end count.

Summer and winter treadling is just a right hand progression of the treadling sequence in subsequent blocks. Correct?

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 10:34

jander14indoor (not verified)

The warp itself is symmetrical across the loom, just 43.5 inches of 8/2 tencel sleyed at 24 ends per inch. 

It's the blocks that aren't symmetrical causing the shafts not to be symetrical.  Due to desired final width, 75 inches or so, and loom limit, I have to weave it in two panels and then sew together.  Apparently a common thing to do historically.

This means that about half the pattern is boarder and the rest is the field in the center.  One block only occurs in the field, the other only in the boarder.  Thus the unsymmetry.

But like I said, between retying the treadles so the assymetric ones are in the center and retying all from starting, unadjusted point is seems to be giving a good shed now.  I wove a short test pattern last night and all seems OK.  No threading errors, and only one shed that might need a little adjustment for a better floor.

Thanks,

Jeff Anderson

Livonia, MI

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 11:02

ReedGuy

Your blocks in the warp must be quite wide and I think I would have scaled them back in width. It seems to me that is the real problem making shafts 7 and 8 carry heddles on one side or the other. 43 inches seems like quite a spread to have the heddle distribution you got happening. I think scaling is very important in these weave structures. It is written about quite extensively in Donna Sullivan's book: "Weaving Overshot".

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 17:21

ReedGuy

What I meant was the pattern repeat width, not the 4 end blocks. Anyway, seems like you must have it all working now with some rearranging to balance things more.

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 20:56

jander14indoor (not verified)

On a amusing to me side note.  I'd been worried about the center seam matching across the two halves for the pattern.  I'm still new at this and my beat isn't as even as it maybe should be yet.

 

In researching this problem I found something that relieved my Obsessive/Compulsive side.  In lecture notes by Dr Virginia S. Wimberley:   "In the South, the belief was that an uneven seam would turn away evil spirits and insure good luck for the user of the coverlet"

 

Well now, can't give the user bad luck now, can I???

 

Jeff

Mon, 03/24/2014 - 21:08

ReedGuy

I would pin it well before joining. Handweaving is not as tightly beaten as machined and will never be perfect. The joned edges are going to be denser, because of draw in unless it was sett different on the outter 4 ends to compensate.