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loom arrived
December 30th, 2010 11:04 pm
My Emilia arrived today. It is much bigger than I expected. I sincerely doubt I would want something larger than this without a dedicated stand.
The final assembly is a real pain to do. The instructions made very little sense. Luckily they were accompanied by pictures so I found a way to make it look like that. I heartily dislike tex-solv cord. If this is the miraculous wonder material that has saved weavers from a lifetime of struggle and toil, the previous stuff must have been, "Harvest your own varicose veins and use them to tie...."
Anyway, one must attach the tie-up bars to the beams with tex-solv. Cutting "14-inch" lengths of tex-solv, burning the ends in an open flame (which it does not tell you that you need, I guess this is not a dorm-room friendly assembly!) for each hole in the back and front beams. One wraps the beam with the cord, one pulls an end through the first hole in the other end of the tex-solv cord, one feeds that resulting tail through the hole in the beam. Then one pinches the middle of the loose half of the cord and shoves that loop into a hole at the end of the cord. One quickly inserts the tie-up bar into that loop and snugs the loop up tight. The cord-loop does not go through the hole in the tie-up bar and just sort of hangs out. Repeat for all beam holes. However, tex-solv cord does not like to have things stuffed through or into its virgin holes. Since the beams and tie-up bars are standard, I am really unclear on why I had to do this. It did not save them any room in the carton.
The entire point of having me attach the tie-up bar seems to be, "Frustrate her as much as possible right up front. Make getting started extremely difficult so she gives up. She has already bought the loom and it is not returnable."
Warping the loom was not fun. I have already failed at it once. The first step is to mark the center of the heddle. Why is this a manual step? It could easily be done at the factory. Then one is supposed to center the size of the warp across the heddle and mark those points with threads. Fine. I do this. I follow the instructions about tying the warp yarn onto the tie-up bar, I follow the instructions about fishing the yarn through with the sleying hook. I pull the warp loop around the warping peg. I "keep doing this". Then I read, "... making sure to wrap the yarn around the tie-up bar after each slot." That is like a recipe that goes through 45 minutes of prep, 30 minutes of waiting, and after final assembly when the cake cannot wait or it won't rise, saying, "Bake in an oven preheated to 350F." Without having mentioned heating the oven up earlier when there was time. So I had to laboriously unwind the warp I had painstakingly fished through a dozen slots.
Later I changed warp yarns and began again. I did it correctly. I followed the steps to the halfway point and I am now ready to fish from slot to hole.
This has been incredibly irritating and I am convinced there must be a better way than this, because this is ridiculous. I cannot quite imagine a better way, but there are books which should arrive at some point and they might help. There are probably YouTube videos as well.
The final assembly is a real pain to do. The instructions made very little sense. Luckily they were accompanied by pictures so I found a way to make it look like that. I heartily dislike tex-solv cord. If this is the miraculous wonder material that has saved weavers from a lifetime of struggle and toil, the previous stuff must have been, "Harvest your own varicose veins and use them to tie...."
Anyway, one must attach the tie-up bars to the beams with tex-solv. Cutting "14-inch" lengths of tex-solv, burning the ends in an open flame (which it does not tell you that you need, I guess this is not a dorm-room friendly assembly!) for each hole in the back and front beams. One wraps the beam with the cord, one pulls an end through the first hole in the other end of the tex-solv cord, one feeds that resulting tail through the hole in the beam. Then one pinches the middle of the loose half of the cord and shoves that loop into a hole at the end of the cord. One quickly inserts the tie-up bar into that loop and snugs the loop up tight. The cord-loop does not go through the hole in the tie-up bar and just sort of hangs out. Repeat for all beam holes. However, tex-solv cord does not like to have things stuffed through or into its virgin holes. Since the beams and tie-up bars are standard, I am really unclear on why I had to do this. It did not save them any room in the carton.
The entire point of having me attach the tie-up bar seems to be, "Frustrate her as much as possible right up front. Make getting started extremely difficult so she gives up. She has already bought the loom and it is not returnable."
Warping the loom was not fun. I have already failed at it once. The first step is to mark the center of the heddle. Why is this a manual step? It could easily be done at the factory. Then one is supposed to center the size of the warp across the heddle and mark those points with threads. Fine. I do this. I follow the instructions about tying the warp yarn onto the tie-up bar, I follow the instructions about fishing the yarn through with the sleying hook. I pull the warp loop around the warping peg. I "keep doing this". Then I read, "... making sure to wrap the yarn around the tie-up bar after each slot." That is like a recipe that goes through 45 minutes of prep, 30 minutes of waiting, and after final assembly when the cake cannot wait or it won't rise, saying, "Bake in an oven preheated to 350F." Without having mentioned heating the oven up earlier when there was time. So I had to laboriously unwind the warp I had painstakingly fished through a dozen slots.
Later I changed warp yarns and began again. I did it correctly. I followed the steps to the halfway point and I am now ready to fish from slot to hole.
This has been incredibly irritating and I am convinced there must be a better way than this, because this is ridiculous. I cannot quite imagine a better way, but there are books which should arrive at some point and they might help. There are probably YouTube videos as well.
