stayed up way too late BUT figured out what was up with my loom!!!! This doesn’t mean anything to anyone BUT the issue was that I didn’t realize that it was a table loom that was converted!! My issue was that I was stepping on the treadles and the frames/harnesses would click and lock into place, when I wanted them to fall when I took my foot off the treadle. I realized they were spring loaded and looked at a million manuals but no one ever mentioned the spring?? I unscrewed the spring from the frames, it worked on all except for one. Something about that one frame allows it to extend so far that it clips onto the locking mechanism but the others don’t….i think it’s an age/wear thing. I was able to tie the locking mechanism out of the way now that it’s not also being held in tension by the spring and voila!!! All my harnesses are rising and falling as they should.
I love working with old machines!! I couldn’t exactly date my loom because it was before they were using serial numbers, (🤯) but earliest it is from 1947 and latest is 1963, which is much older than I realized!! There’s a new weaving studio in the building so I stopped in to scope it out and was talking to the owner (so nice!) and showed her a picture and she honestly kind of freaked me out bc she was like “oh, that’s really old. That’s really, really old” but I am no stranger to (expensive) old mechanics thanks to printing, and part of the joy of printing for me is working with the old machines and figuring out what’s wrong with them. It is just incredibly satisfying to meeeeeeee!!
