Well, I finally got round to it.
Had this thing floating about in my head for a good long time now, as I'd never been fully satisfied with any of the various looms or setups for tablet weaving. They were either too large or unwieldy and backstrap style, while wonderfully nomadic is a bit of a pain as you can't quickly just put it down to answer the door.
So this is lasercut from 6mm poplar ply. It all just slots together and should be postable in an A4 envelope, reducing shipping costs (in theory).
I'm going to have a stab at selling these and this is my first really rough draft. As you may be able to see, I've forgotten to put a place in the main boards to mount ratchet stops so I'm propping the ratchets up with nails and screws and things like that. Also, some improvements could stand to be made to the beam setup to make it move more smoothly, I'm even considering buying bearings. For now it works not bad though, and it's not as if the beams are moving all the time anyway, so a bit of friction isn't a huge pain in the behind.
In the next, or second next, draft I'd like to figure out some way of having the cards individually weighted with something like tama in order to allow continual turning, currently this loom only supports patterns that are equally forward and reverse across the cards, so it's limited in that way. I also feel that I need to find a way of strengthening the long-wise dimension of it as it can bend a little under tension.
Also, this ply is not perfect for the comb as when it's cut that fine it's quite weak, so in the future I may make the comb from acrylic instead, it would probably allow me to cut finer combs as well.