After being driven inside by the high humidity/heat (heat index of 100+) of late afternoon I decide to do some more scarf weaving on Dot, the Leclerc Dorothy table loom. This is the very fine wool test scarf and it has been a while since I have worked on it.
All was going well until the right hand floating selvedge broke. Broken warp threads or in this case a floating selvedge thread are relatively easy to fix with a pin to anchor the thread into the woven cloth below the fell line, then carry on weaving until there is enough to grip the thread and remove the pin.
All was going well and then the left hand selvedge thread broke!! Too much of a coincidence so I’ve had to look at what caused this. Previously I had woven several feet of cloth without any breakages so it wasn’t anything obvious. I had woven several inches yesterday when the breakages happened and hadn’t really been paying attention to the draw in which had mostly been minimal. If the draw in becomes too severe it means more wear and tear from the beater to the outside warp yarn and in particular the floating selvedges. It doesn’t appear much in the photo, but given the yarn is rather thin I suspect I was beating a little harder than previously and combined with the small draw in was enough to ‘wear out’ the floating selvedge threads.
I’ll remedy this by paying more attention to beating (a little less firm), and also reduce the weight on the floating selvedge threads to lower the tension slightly. Lower tension can increase the draw in, but I will take care to place the weft yarn without too much tension to avoid this.
In other work yesterday (during cooler hours) I finished the two old saws that I had bought. Despite some decades of neglect they cleaned up pretty well, and will eventually have some sharpening done to bring them back completely.
