Way back (10+ years) when I acquired ‘Big Mac’ – a 56″ 8 shaft Macomber Loom – my first job was to clean everything – repaint and resurface, find replacements for missing parts, and one of the biggest jobs was empty years worth of accumulated sunflower seed hulls from the hollow space at the center of the warp beam. They had almost certainly been put there by industrious mice over a period of a few years when the loom was stored in a garage. No real damage to the woodwork or metal parts of the beam.

As the loom was pretty well in use from then on and inside I hadn’t worried about something similar happening, but just this last week I moved the loom from the temporary location in our spare room to the studio space (finally). The build is far from complete, but as the studio portion is clear and clean and covered by a roof we thought a) we should be using it and b) it would finally clear a couple of rooms in the house of their accumulated weaving/spinning/fiber ‘stuff’.

Living surrounded by 18 acres of forest pretty well ensures we have the odd rodent and despite the fact there are occasional sightings of a Black Rat snake in the garage I had to make sure we didn’t end up with a similar stash of sun flower hulls.

In the picture the black cross bracket holds the central axle, with a small triangular gap between each arm. I cut out some thin sheet steel to fit and then tacked them into place. All my other looms are either solid or sealed so now with this fix hopefully the rodent problem is solved, although I’ll be checking.

‘Big Mac’ will be set up to weave the 2020 Christmas towels which if I get underway this month it will be the earliest start yet!! Time will tell.