While musing on the beauties of my looms I have been continuing to make progress on cleaning up the Binder loom. I got the rust off of all the treadles (they each only have a small metal spike on them that seems to be there to help align the treadle with the springs that go under them). In addition, there are a couple metal plates attached to wood pieces (I think one is a hand brake, I’m not sure yet what the other one is for), and those are now clean. Most of the metal-attached-to-wood that is left is nuts and bolts on pieces that are still connected to each other.

The weather has been beautiful this week, so I thought I should start doing some of the metal that’s not attached to anything. The first step was to take the jack mechanism out of the castle, as the jacks are metal and not really accessible in the castle (the castle is the tall center part of the loom). That was easier than I expected. The mechanism is held in by two long bolts which came undone without any trouble. Since I was poking around I also took a look at the piece where the treadles attach to see how they fit on it. This had been a bit of a mystery to me, and I was concerned about it. The previous owner of the loom had made detailed diagrams of how to put it together when she dismantled it, but there is no diagram regarding the treadles. That may be because it’s pretty self-evident. I am no longer concerned about that part. I removed a few screws to detach a metal rod that the treadles thread onto so it could be cleaned.

There are 16 metal bars that fit in the harnesses (on on the top and one on the bottom of each harness) that the heddles will be suspended between. I started cleaning rust off of these using Loctite Rust Dissolver (formerly Naval Jelly). The directions say to paint on the rust dissolver, let it sit for 5-10 minutes, rinse it off, and voila! Of course it is not that easy. The bars looked better after one coat, but still rusty. My next step was to paint on a second coat of the rust dissolver and scrub with a metal bristle brush. That worked like a charm, but it takes about half an hour per bar. I was hoping to get them all done this week, but so far I have only been able to do 9. I expect to have to use the same procedure on the 8 jacks as well, and on various other small parts (the rods that tie up the treadles and nuts, bolts and screws that will be used to put the loom back together). I babysit my grandchildren 2 ½ weekdays most weeks (they were away this week), and I don’t want to be using the rust dissolver while they are around, so it may be tricky to find the time to finish the jacks. We’ll see.

I’ve finished cleaning all the heddles that were in a shoebox (775 of them) and moved on to the heddles that had been left on the loom. At this point I have done 1,000 heddles. I’m estimating that there are a total of 1600 there. Most of the heddles are cleaning up well, but there are some that were extensively rusted and may not be useable. I will re-evaluate when I start putting them back on the loom to make sure there aren’t any rough spots that will abrade the threads during weaving. I’m curious about why some heddles (and other metal pieces) have more rust than others that were in the same situation. The heddles on the loom in general are more rusted than those in the shoebox, I assume because they had more exposure to the damp air. But why are some that were on the loom lightly rusted and others heavily rusted? Is it just position? Does the metal content vary? I doubt I’ll ever have an answer to that, but it’s something I think about while scrubbing away.