Heddles

Still Plugging Away

/ susanhaggerty / Leave a comment

I feel as though I haven’t made a whole lot of progress this week. Partly this is because I had other things to do besides work on the loom, and partly it is because cleaning the metal heddle bars is just taking longer than I expected. I have 3 more to do. I refined my rust removal technique a bit; I found that if I leave the rust remover on a bit longer after the initial coat it is easier to get the rust off. So now I paint both sides of the bar with rust dissolver and let it sit for 15 minutes or so. In that time the rust dissolver starts to dry up. When I’m ready to really get to work I paint a second coat of rust dissolver (over what’s already there) on the first 8-12 inches of one side of the rod. Then I scrub about 6 inches of that. After scrubbing it can be hard to see the metal since it’s covered with rust-colored goop, so I paint on a little fresh rust dissolver which cleans off the goop and lets me see if I need to scrub any of that part further. When painting the fresh coat on I extend the area I’m painting by another 4 inches or so, and continue working down the length of the rod this way. I’m glad to have worked this out before tackling the jacks.

 

In addition to cleaning the heddle rods I have also cleaned some of the springs that go under the treadles, and I’ve removed rust from the screws, nuts, and bolts that I removed from the loom to get at the heddles and treadles. I still have to de-rust the remaining springs, miscellaneous nuts and bolts from when the loom was partially disassembled in the 1970s, and the thin metal rods used for tying up the treadles. I found 16 of these metal rods loose in box that are quite extensively rusted, and many, many more in a plastic bag that have far less rust. I’m thinking I’ll start on the lightly rusted ones since I’m unlikely to use all of these tie-up rods at once.

 

A comparison of cleaned springs with those yet to be cleaned.

A comparison of cleaned springs with those yet to be cleaned.

I also did a little more cleaning up of metal pieces that are still attached to wood. My grandchildren will be with me all this week, so I don’t expect to be able to get to cleaning the metal jacks until the weekend. For this week I will try and finish the metal-attached-to-wood, and possibly start cleaning up the wood itself.

 

1210 heddles have been cleaned to date. I think my estimate of 1600 heddles total is too low, but we’ll see.

In the Meantime…

/ susanhaggerty / Leave a comment

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.

A close up of part of the jack mechanism as it sits in the castle.

A close up of part of the jack mechanism as it sits in the castle.

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.

The rusted bars that hold the heddles in the harnesses.

The rusted bars that hold the heddles in the harnesses.

Four of the bars that hold the heddles all cleaned up and shiny!

Four of the bars that hold the heddles all cleaned up and shiny!

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.