On making in general and on making a Rigid Heddle Loom in particular.
On making in general, if you set out to make something, frequently the first thing you will think about is what am I going to make it out of? You may be tempted to look at what other makers have done and what materials they have favoured, Michelangelo didn't have google but I am sure he knew lots of other artists quite liked Carrera marble.
So I want to make a loom and wood seems to be preferred to marble and I have got this plank that seems like it might make a good start for the sides so I look at the dimensions of the plank and start to plan with those in mind. Then I change my mind and decide I am going to make it out of some other material and this is where the general mistake arises.
I allowed the constraints of one material, to constrain me when I decided to change materials. Instead of thinking it through from the beginning again.
On making a Rigid Heddle Loom, since the plank was 9 cms wide I had decided that the maximum height of the sides of the loom would be that, even when I decided to use laser cut plywood for the sides.
There are good weaving reasons for it to be significantly more and were I to make another loom, the maximum height of the sides would likely be more than twice that. (The height of the side goes to how much woven fabric you can wind on to the end of the loom.)
I have laser cut the heddles, which can be seen in the images and although a laser engraver is a precision instrument when engraving an image, it is much less so when cutting plywood. The kerf is the width of material that is destroyed when making a cut and the heddles that I can cut would only produce relatively course fabric. (Commercially made heddles are quite expensive, especially when I am just playing.)
The heddle blocks, where the heddle sits and the thing that looks like a dog in the photos, are to some extent guesswork and I will have to warp the loom up and weave to find how well they work. They are only bolted on so can be moved or refined as needful.
I have still to make some spools of suitable length, think about putting apron rods on it, I don't think it will tension if I don't, and to warp it up and actually try weaving.










