Tips for Beaming a Warp when moving is difficult
Dressing my loom is hard on me. It generally means being on my feet a lot, and walking from the front of the loom to the back can be tiring (especially because sometimes “front” means “around the couch to where the warp chain is lying”) These are the tools I’ve come up with to make the process as smooth as possible and limit the amount of times I have to adjust or tension the warp.
I dressed my loom front to back, so the lease sticks are in front of the reed. If I hadn’t done it that way, I’d have a raddle in the beater.
To start, I’ve got a wide piece of tape on my back beam marked off in inches and half inches. I section my warp in whatever way makes the most sense - this time it was by pattern repeat (26 ends), but often it’s by inch. The marks on the beam make it easy to get everything straight.
I lay my warp out over the couch. This one was really long (a bit more than 14 yards) so I kept it chained and unchained about 3 yds at a time when I did have to go around. I connect the warp sections to the back apron using loops of yarn and larks head knots. I line the loops up with the marks on the tape to keep things tidy.
The warp lays over the couch. This provides just a bit of tension through fiction. If I need more tension, I lay a blanket over the warp.
This is my DIY “angel wings” set up. Angel wings are a way of providing tension to the yarn as it goes over and under against the large dowels. Here you can see it’s still sectioned off (the knots are just over the back beam) but as it goes it becomes very smooth and spreads nicely.
I use pencils and elastics to keep the selvedge threads where they should be. This keeps the warp from spreading out wider as you wind (which causes tension issues when weaving).
Here you can see the warp has spread, the selvedges are stacked, and the packing is in place. I put in wooden blind slats every 3/4 turn or so. Probably more than is necessary, but better to have too much packing than not enough.
With this set up, everything behind the reed it tidy and has even tension.
I do need to occasionally tidy up the warp if it gets caught on the lease sticks, but I can do that without having to move too far. Every 3 yards or so I do go around and unchain a bit more and adjust the warp, but I don’t do the tugging and flicking like I used to with a typical “crank and yank” method. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s the easiest way I’ve found to do it myself without a whole lot of hassle.
When warping back to front, I do occasionally have twisted bouts, but it’s never caused much of a problem. A way around that is to wind from the cross end and have the lease sticks behind the heddles (since you’ll need them there anyway).
Once the front is tied on, I remove the angel wings and the lease sticks.
