Winding Down

September 24, 2015 / susanhaggerty / 2 Comments

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!

Progress

September 6, 2015September 6, 2015 / susanhaggerty / Leave a comment

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:

Name draft placemats

Isn’t Technology Wonderful!

August 23, 2015 / susanhaggerty / Leave a comment

I haven’t posted in a couple weeks as progress on the loom cleanup has been slow. Partly I needed a bit of a respite, and partly I had other responsibilities to attend to. I have made some progress, however. I finished up the heddle bars, treadle springs, and started to de-rust the jacks. I did one jack, but it took a couple days of work and I’m not really happy with the results. While mulling that situation over, I ran across a link on Weavolution to this site: http://www.rickswoodshopcreations.co/Miscellaneous/Rust_Removal.htm

For a small investment in equipment, you too can remove rust with minimal effort! I tried this method out on the crank that turns the warp beam.

Following the directions I hooked up the crank to the negative lead of the charger, hooked the positive lead to an old stainless steel food processor blade that I got at our transfer station’s “Swap Shop”, submerged the crank and half of the blade in electrolyte solution, plugged it in and went and did something else for a couple hours.

When I came back, the rust was gone. The electrolysis solution was pretty gunky, as was the food processor blade, but the crank is back to usable metal. If this method works for the jacks it will make cleaning them up so much easier.

The tricky part is that the jacks are almost 36” long. I had to wrack my brains to figure out where I could get a plastic container that would allow me to fully submerge a 36” long object. The longest plastic storage container I could find was more like 35”. Trash cans are not 36” deep. I finally was able to find a long pvc window box liner. I will test out this system on the jacks sometime this week. I’m not one hundred percent sure that the window box liner is watertight, so the test will have to be done in good weather outdoors. There are plenty of smaller pieces of metal to take care of until then.

The most exciting part for me in using the electrolysis (well, in addition to the fact that it’s pretty cool to see it work) is that it frees up the time I had been using to scrub off rust and allows me to do other things. When I bought this loom I had just finished a project on the Tools of the Trade loom, and I haven’t had enough time to start another. I miss weaving. I have already started getting a warp ready for the next project.

The heddles are all clean, all 1,853 of them. As I mentioned before I know some of them will likely have to be discarded, but I wouldn’t expect to need 1,800 anyway. I have also finished cleaning all the metal bits that are still attached to the wood of the loom. In addition to starting to clean the jacks this week I hope to spend some time cleaning the wood. There is old packing tape residue to be removed, as well as general dirt and mildew. I do think I see a light at the end of this tunnel, though!