September | 2015 | Maple Woods Handweaving

All the necessary clean-up that has to happen before I rebuild the loom has now been done. I was able to get all the masking tape off using a hairdryer and letter opener. The adhesive residue from the masking tape and the residue from packing tape (adhesive and some fibers from the string that runs through packing tape) came off with vegetable oil and gentle scraping. I washed all the pieces before and after removing the tape so that there would not be any oil left on anything. Once I had rewashed all the wood parts I coated each one with a layer of tung oil. Washing made the wood look a lot better, and adding the tung oil improved it even further.

Parts of the loom drying off after tung oil was applied.

I am still working on removing rust from the reeds. I have used electrolysis on one of the reeds three times, and there is still rust on it. It gets better each time I do it, but not completely. I’m still not sure if the reeds will ever be usable. Luckily I have 32″ reeds that I can use unless I have a project that goes the full weaving width of the loom (36″). The two metal pipes that support the warp beams got cleaned after my ingenious husband was able to jury-rig a trough to use for electrolysis. It worked very quickly and easily.

The "trough", created out of two milk crates, two 2x2 pieces of lumber, and an old shower curtain liner.

The “trough”, created out of two milk crates, two 2×2 pieces of lumber, and an old shower curtain liner.

Since the reeds are not really necessary everything is now ready to be put back together. I admit I am apprehensive about getting the pieces put back together and have everything configured right. I have diagrams and information that the previous owner wrote down when she disassembled the loom, and I have a picture of a fully assembled Binder loom to assist me. Hopefully those will be enough to get everything back where it belongs in working order!

Using electrolysis has really moved the loom clean-up project along. All the jacks are now free of rust, as is every nut, bolt, and washer. While the electrolysis was running I was able to wash all the wooden parts of the loom, so everything is clean now. The wood seems to have come back to life, it looks warm and lustrous now. I can’t tell you how nice it is to be able to touch the loom without feeling as though I need to wash my hands.

The next step is to remove masking tape. The tape was originally put on to mark parts of the loom for reconstruction (as in marking tab A to remember to insert it in slot B), but which has now hardened. When it comes off it comes off in flakes. Today I started remove pieces of it using a hairdryer and a blunt letter opener. The first piece of tape took an hour to remove, the next three took only fifteen minutes each. I guess I got through the learning curve. There still seems to be a little dried adhesive residue after the tape is off. Some of it scrapes off with the letter opener (which does a good job of getting under the tape without gouging the finish). I am going to try cleaning the rest off before I put a coat of tung oil on the wood.

I still have 3 reeds to put through the electrolysis, as well as 40 rods for tying the treadles up to the lamms, and two metal pipes which go through the center of the warp beams. The pipes are too long even for the window box liner, so my husband has offered to jury rig something with some two by fours and plastic liner to allow me to use electrolysis for the pipes as well as the rest of the metal.

Tie-up rods

I ran across a nice 8-shaft pattern that will work as Christmas gifts if I get this loom set up quickly enough. I ordered the yarn for it, and expect it to arrive this week. I figure if I can’t get them done for Christmas this year, there’s always next year. In the meantime, this is happening on the 4-shaft (Tools of the Trade) loom: