I am so pleased  with my new V-Series 40 shaft loom.  It is incredibly well built, sturdy and lovely to look at as well.  We received the loom shipment last week just as the power went out during a wind storm on Whidbey Island, Washington.  We got the loom assembled anyway.  Overall the assembly process went quite smoothly, although the assembly manual is currenlty being updated  updating to reflect improvements to the loom that have been made over time. Any questions we had were answered immediately by AVL’s outstanding customer service rep, Ryan Utnehmer. The most time consuming, albeit simple, part of the assembly process was loading 40 shafts with their heddles.

I was a little intimidated by the thought of threading 40! Shafts, but I found setting up the loom far easier than I had anticipated. Winding onto the back beam with the tension box was easy since the loom is equipped with a slot to accommodate the standard AVL tension box system, which I already owned.  During threading, even the back shafts are easily accessible and the threading of the heddles went very smoothly. I did run into a problem trying to get the threading cross on the tension box to work with the V-Series thread path from the tension box to the back beam to the shafts, and resorted to the “blue tape’ method to keep the threads in order. If anyone has solved this probelm, I would appreciate your input.

Finally the loom was ready for a test run.  I connected my laptop, brought up a 40 shaft design I had just finished, and was weaving within minutes. It seems that everything on this loom was designed to make weaving joyful.  The brake system works well, and the shed is very roomy. The warp of my design is 40 epi, 20/2 Egyptian cotton and 30/2 Tex cotton for tie downs. The weft is 10/2 spun rayon, hand dyed, and 20/2 UKI cotton.

First Project on V Series AVLV Series Loom Assembled

Comments

tien (not verified)

Congrats on getting your new loom up and working! I haven't got a V-series or a spool rack, so I'm afraid I can't help much - with my warping wheel I just use a crossmaker and tie off the cross at the far end. Can you do something similar with the tension box/spool rack?

And your design looks wonderful!

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