Category Archives: Clean & Service

Rainy Day work

Clean & Service, Equipment, Festivals, Looms, Project, Studio, Weaving

The ‘Oak and Fern’ bathmat is now finished. It’s still on the loom as I have enough warp for another four to five foot long rug. I may weave two smaller door mats for the doors from the studio to the garage and the workshop. I have plenty of weft yarn.

Oak & Fern Bathmat Finished

In other work in the studio I continued cleaning various parts of ‘Senior’. The treadles are like the rest of the loom wood – perhaps maple under a dark stain. One part that seems to be different is the shuttle race on the beater frame. It appears to be a darker wood and is typically a harder wood as it is an area that experiences a fair amount of wear and tear.

I’ve numbered the heddle frames as they are removed and cleaned to ensure I put them back in the right order. The frames and lamms seem to be in reasonable condition and don’t have much wear. One small shortfall is the lower lamm where the original wire connections to the treadle was made is only as wide as the 6 treadles side by side. Most looms have two extra treadles, i.e. for a 4 shaft; 6 treadles. If I add two more treadles I may have to extend the lower lamm on each side. The side by side picture shows the first cleaned treadle and beside it the shuttle race. The slot for the reed at the back of the race is a good example of the workmanship. The top and front of the race are finished and smooth. The slot edge is still as originally cut . I’ll likely sand it of a little more just for the looks as functionally it doesn’t need changing.

Today is the start of a fine period here in the valley so I will be able to get back up on the roof to get as much done before we head up to Townsend for the Fall Guild sale this weekend where I will be volunteering and selling some of my woven and spun items.

Hearthside Loom Restoration

Hearthside Loom Restoration

Clean & Service, Looms, Project, ,

A few months back I received an email from the Townsend Guild saying they had been offered an old loom if anyone wanted it. The photo’s showed a jack loom with 6 shafts that folded to reduce front to back size. While definitely showing the signs of age it mostly looked ‘all there’. I took a quick trip up to Knoxville to pick it up.

It turned out to be a Sears Roebuck Hearthside Loom from the late 1940’s. They were advertised in the SR catalogue between 1946 and 1950. Designed by Nellie Sargent Johnson for Sears and build by the Pope Machine Company in Kankakee, Illinois. It is a 6 shaft jack loom. The loom has a 38″ weaving width and came with a 12 dent reed.

The loom was described by the donating family member as in working condition, but once home it was fairly evident that the loom had not been woven on for some time and was missing a couple of parts that would have prevented any weaving. At the time I didn’t have room to set it up properly so I just unpacked it, checked everything, then covered it with plastic sheeting and put it in a corner of the garage. Move forward a few months and I needed to move some sheet rock from on top of OSB sheets in the garage and given that I now had room in the studio I was able, with help from Anne, to move it into a more permanent place so I can devote some time to restoring it back to clean working order.

The loom has some quite innovative features but overall the quality is not quite at the standard of other loom manufacturers (although I guess there weren’t too many at the time). The first goal is to clean up all the woodwork and assess any damage. I won’t be aiming for ‘brand new’ but rather clean and functional with some display of age. I will also look at minor modifications to improve the working without changing the overall look and feel. I would like to be able to demonstrate with it at the next Fiber Arts Festival in April 2021 so will look into strengthening the base and adding something to enable rolling it.

The loom will be called ‘Senior’. I’ll update this blog with more as work now continues.

During a rainy day today I started removing parts of the loom and sanding off the old varnish and accumulated dirt and dust. The construction is fairly basic and while the design is innovative the construction had left some joins weaker than ideal and it looks like there have been ongoing repairs and moving/addition of screws. The metal hinge connections for the treadles were well rusted up, but I managed to remove them eventually.

The photos are (L-R). The back beam in received condition – typical of most of the loom. The breast beam and beater top after clean up. The treadles in place and off the loom ready for sanding. I have also cleaned up one heddle frame and numbered it so it will go back into the right slots, and the shuttle race which needed some stuck on marker tape removed.

The only serious damage to the loom is water related where I suspect the loom sat in water for a period resulting in a little of the end grain of lower parts softening. The earlier repairs involved adding more screws higher up. I’ll fix it by sandwiching the old wood with a surround of good wood as part of a box frame base to help with overall stability/strength. Most of the screws and bolts will be replaced as I reassemble the loom. I will have to design and make some replacement parts and try to improved the rudimentary (original) cloth and warp beam winding handles. Plenty of work for winter months.

Shaker Saxony spinning wheel service

Clean & Service, Spinning

Yesterday I finished giving the Tennessee Valley Handspinner’s Guild Shaker Saxony style spinning wheel a clean and service. I still need to do a little bit of test spinning, but as I did spin on it before and haven’t changed anything physically it should be fine.

Shaker wheel finished

I cleaned and lightly greased all the bearings, lightly brushed off all built up dust and then gave all the wood a very light rub of feed and wax. The 200 year patina is still there and the wear from long use still evident.

  • Bench detail, right front leg mounting
  • Maidens and flyer
  • Bench detail, underneath

There are two areas where, at some time, repairs will be needed. The right front leg has a slight wobble on it – the mounting through the bench has come loose over the years. It will need to be removed, repacked and replaced. The other area is the drive wheel. There is a chip of wood missing where one spoke fixing has broken. The spokes are fixed in place by a small wood pin driven diagonally through the rim into the spoke. The fix, whenever it was performed, was to remove the rim and rotate it about an inch and re-drill all the pin holes then re-fit the spokes. Since then some spokes have worked loose leaving the drive wheel with a little bit of a side-to-side movement. Resetting all the pins would likely fix that. The drive wheel rim joints are still tight so the wheel operates fine.

  • Missing rim chip
  • Rotated rim

As I didn’t agree to undertake any repairs I’ll return it working and clean and if at some later date the Guild would like it repaired I can take on that job. With care when moving, the wheel will work fine for some time yet.