Thursday, January 20, 2011

Building the Backstrap Loom

I am moving forward on my project list for the Ymir A&S Competition.  I am having to do a few things out of order from the natural flow of the finished project since some of the items I needed had to be ordered online, like the soapstone for the spindle whorl and the beeswax for the leather tablets.  So, I am working on construction of the backstrap loom so it will be complete once I am ready the do the tablet weaving.

Yesterday I stopped by the hardware store and picked up some oak dowels.  I got two 36" long, 3/4" oak dowels and one 36" long, 1/2" oak dowel.

I am using the instructions for making a backstrap loom by Laverne Waddington whose Blog you can read here.  They are very clear and not intimidating at all.

The first thing I did was to cut my 3/4" dowels to length.  I made the two loom bars 20 inches long.  On the ends of loom bar that will be closest to me as I weave, I sanded down two indentions around the dowel to hold the ties from the backstrap.  This should help the ties from slipping off.  The remaining 16" pieces will be used for the roll up sticks.  I then cut the 1/2" dowel into thirds to create three 12" pieces.  One of these I set aside to be used for my spindle later on.  The other two will be used for warping sticks and the shed rod.

That is the end to the construction of the wooden parts of the backstrap loom.  I now need to make the woven backstrap, the ties for the backstrap (possibly finger woven) and some smaller lucet cord for ties on some of the other sticks.  If I can find some suitable wool to use I will try to get it warped tonight.

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