All you need to know about counterbalance looms?

As it is continually said that it is "impossible" to weave "unbalanced" sheds on counterbalance looms, I decided to make an illustrated guide to why it is actually perfectly do-able...

So, now there are two new pages on my website - one about how an ordinary Swe style 4-shaft CB loom with horses works, and another one about how dräll pulleys work, and what they can be used for.

The first snowdrop, the first daffodil and a mystery solved

The first snowdrop is outside the front porch:

On my other blog I have a label for the first snowdrop. I haven't had that label for more than 4 years, but it sure seems as if they start earlier and earlier...


"The first daffodil" (which may come to be the title of what is on the loom):

(but I plan to have one complete with petals a little higher up)


And the mystery:
I have noticed that hand-throwing shuttles on the AVL makes me tired much faster than on weaving on the old CM.
Today it dawned on me: the shuttle race is in the way!
On the CM I can hold the beater away with the thumb of the catch-hand, and put the hand with the palm under the shed opening. This way the shuttle flows right into the hand - but with a shuttle race, I have to catch the shuttle as it comes along the "shelf".
Also, the AVL beater is heavier than the other, so the thumb has to stay in its "holding-away" position a tad longer. So to catch the shuttle, I have to do the actual catch with the fore-finger on top, which in the next instant means I have to shift the grip on the shuttle to be able to throw it into the next shed...

(I tried to get a pic of this, but would have needed an extra hand for the camera)

More museum examples

On request from Meg I continued looking in the museum catalogue.
And I found two more "interesting" descriptions:

Weaving reed

Material: Wood, Textile
Technique: Knotted
Function: Dividing the warp

The [weaving] reed sits near the cloth beams [yes, plural - my note] in a weaving loom, directly in front of the shafts. It's function is to divide the threads.
The rectangular reeds consist of a wooden frame, into which thin blades of wood (in one instance metal) are mounted with a textile band.


Weaving shuttle

Material: wood
Technique: carpentered [my dictionary says "carpenter" is a verb, so it must be correct...?]
Function: weaving

Shuttle. A cloth consists of two thread systems, warp and weft. The warp is tensioned during weaving and is crossed at right angles by the weft. With the help of the shuttle, the weft is inserted from side to side between the warp ends. The weft can go over and under the warp ends. With a treadle loom the lifting and lowering of the warp ends is done by the treadles. The shuttle is [quill-shaped?], with a hole in which a dowel is fixed. The weft is fastened around the dowel. One [of the shuttles] is patterned in two places.


In all fairness: at Murberget, they have elected to transcribe the text in the old paper catalogue. These two artefacts have no pictures, but in many instances they show the handwritten paper entry, often from the 1920-1940ies. Here is one example.
(I have often marvelled at what the museum generalists came up with a hundred years ago... but that is another story.)

So, Murberget uses the original texts/descriptions - most other museums do not. I remember looking in the Nordiska museets paper catalogue, and... let me say I can understand why they do not transcribe indiscriminately.

However, what is interesting about yesterday's post is that it is written after 1991. As I recall, there were several books about spinning and spinning wheels out by then, even written by Swedish authors... And even generalists should be able to read?

Now, to cheer us all up, a picture:

The picture comes from here.

Be sure to click the pic to biggify!

Multishaft counterbalance looms

...and some "different" configurations for the tie-up of horses.

I stumbled on Sue's blog the other day, and found some astonishing CB pictures.
I don't know Sue, but she has informative and picture-heavy posts about travels in India and Turkey. Because of the many pictures I will first link directly to the one I found most interesting, and then to the actual post. All links will open I new windows.

This picture is from India.
I have never seen this arrangement before: the horses are at the top, the pulleys underneath. It makes great sense, though! Here is the blog post.

Now two pictures from Turkey. This one shows only 4 shafts, but it also shows that our obsession with measurements probably is overkill...
Blog post here

Sue writes that this loom has 24 shafts (but only 12 treadles). What can we say? That we are hopeless wimps?
Blog post (with a couple more pictures of the same loom) here

Once spotted...

To think that I hadn't seen this kind of double pulleys (or, not consciously, anyway) until a couple of months ago... now I see them everywhere.

Spotted at a flea market not far from here:

As (again) they were without companions, I left them for someone else to play with.

(And Jean, if you read this, the strange shaft-ties: I have given up on that, until I can get to the museum myself. They keep giving me the wrong references - )

The last about double pulleys

For now, anyway :-)

First of all: I now own one double pulley! It was there, just beside the double flyer spinning wheel - it rather seemed like a "double" day. Until I asked for the other pulley... the dealer didn't even understand the question: why should he have a pair?
Anyway, it followed me home (even though the pulleys won't turn):

In the last post about double pulleys I wondered about Grenander's sentence "[...]with two pulleys on two axles on the same level [...]"
Jean graciously sent me a picture of this kind of double pulley(s):

Thanks, Jean - I had never seen such pulleys before, but apparently they existed even here.

Anyway, when I unearthed my folding CB to ready it for a demo, I decided to try to rig a "double pulley" simulation, to see if it would work with the crossed cord tie-up.
I thought I would just tie four cords over the castle, like this:

Half an hour later I decided I wasn't very interested, after all. (IOW, I couldn't get it to balance/work...) The horses went back on, and the demo went considerably better that it would have with the crossed cords...

Conclusion: hooray for countermarches!

On double pulleys and no horses (warning, long)

(I should have been sewing, but the pins are too fiddly for the wrenched wrist. So I have been reading, instead.)

I started with Gertrud Grenander-Nyberg's Lanthemmens vävstolar (1974, ISBN 91-7108-076-7). On pages 287 f she writes about double pulleys (my translation; my comments in italics):

For plain weave, threaded on four shafts, there was a pulley type seldom used nowadays, namely two pulleys mounted on the same axle. The pulleys can be of different size. For the tying, the outer shafts were tied with the cord over the bigger pulley, which made the shaft tieup clearer (simpler?)

Important words here: CAN be of diff size. In most (all?) pictures I've seen they have been of the same (or so near the same as possible) size. (Had they been different size, they could have been called "horizontal dräll pulleys"? Has anyone seen an example of that (ie with more than two pulleys)? Edit: here.

The Finnish textile technician Helvi Pyysalo has showed that two pulleys on the same level can be used for four-shaft even-sided twill by connecting shafts one and three over one pulley and shafts two and four over the other pulley.
With this method follows that, when the shafts are lowered in pairs in four different combinations, the cords on both pulleys will move, which is (recommended, necessary? - "good") to get a clear shed.

I don't understand that: does she say that for EVERY shed on a CB loom "both cords should move"? If so: why?? Or what is it I don't understand here? With one pulley and horses that is not always the case, but sheds can be good anyway.

This can happen not only with two pulleys on two axles on the same level but also with the pulleys mounted on the same axle like on a double pulley.

Is there a difference in appearance in the two described above? (for "double pulley" she uses the Swedish "parblock", so in the text there is a distinction between the two types here.) ETA: see picture here.

It is likely that the double pulleys were used in this fashion in older times for weaving even-sided twill. With the pulleys on the same level the upper tieup was lower than if it was accomplished with several tools on different levels. Double pulleys were therefore an advantage when using the oldest looms which have low castles. This can be an explanation to the numerous double pulleys from the older times.
Nowadays, for four shafts, usually only one of the pulleys is used in combination with horses.


Same author, 25 years later, in Linnelärft i Ångermanland (2001, ISBN 91-7108-480-0), has slightly changed her ideas.

Background, about "premielärft" - roughly "prime quality linen cloth": in 18th century the "powers" divided the country and decided Ångermanland was the region to grow flax and (spin and) weave linen. To make the people more enthusiastic about it, certain standards were set, and those who fulfilled them got extra pay.

Anyway. According to Grenander, weavers of prime cloth were specialists, using special looms. Those looms were often shallower than "allround" looms - sources from the time state that an allround loom was usually about 2 1/2 aln (about 5 ft), while linen looms were only 2 aln (4 ft).

The reasoning behind that is (apart from the fact that German linen looms often were shallow) that the "free" warp is shorter, and therefore less exposed to wear (p 99).

Something I don't understand here: as linen is not elastic, shouldn't it benefit from a longer "free" warp, by distributing the stretch over a longer section?

(She goes on to say that plain weave needs less loom-depth than multi-shafted cloth, which is of course true.)

She also thinks that the double pulleys, at least those with short uprights, were used primarily by these specialist weavers.

(To me it is not clear exactly how she came to that conclusion.)

On p 103 she writes that, because of the fineness of the prime cloth, the warps had to be distributed over four shafts, and therefore the double pulleys were "the most efficient". Thus looms with double pulleys were, together with very fine reeds, the most typical tools of a "prime" weaver.

I'm still unsure of why double pulleys are "the most efficient"...

Anyway, it is apparent that she has changed her mind over the 25 years between her thesis and her last book - from thinking that double pulleys were, in effect, "old-fashioned", to thinking they were the mark of a specialist.


Just for curiosity: "prime linens" came i 8 classes. They were (at least most of them) 1 1/2 aln (3 ft, or 88 cm) wide.
For class 1 there were 2720-2920 ends ( or 30-32 ends/cm); for class 8 (the finest) there were 4120-4 320 ends (or 45-48 ends/cm). (from Uppfinningarnas bok, band 6 from 1873.

And this, my friends, was all handspun singles!

More about horses

In Sweden, everybody knows how to tie the horses. They "must" be parallel, but opposite - like this:

(well, they can be the other way around,too)

Then I found a picture on the 'net - a picture that can't be copied, only linked to.
From what I can see, the horses are tied in a pattern I have never seen before:

Let's see if this gives the right photo:

This photo of Museo-Laboratorio di tessitura a mano Giuditta Brozzetti is courtesy of TripAdvisor.

Or is she using just three shafts? I can't see the fourth, but it also does not look like the horses are tied two-to-one-shaft...
If they are, they still look like a "different" style.

This is how three shafts "should" be tied, according to Swe traditions:

Either tie one shaft to both ends of one horse, the other horse to the two other shafts (works best, IMO), or tie both horses to the middle shaft.

Styles of horses and pulleys

I wrote this post on Monday, and the instant I was going to click "publish" the electricity vanished. We were powerless for about 20 hours. Ironically, both "before" us (on the power line) and "after" us ("us", here, means some 25-39 houses along the road) did have electricity, except for 15 minutes. BUT: it is our part of the power lines that is buried, "to avoid power cuts in the future". Go figure!

The best laid plans can be wrecked in an instant - . More than a week ago, I fell and wrenched my right wrist and my left ankle (and got several sore spots in between). It could have been a lot worse, but I still can’t lift anything heavier than a coffee mug...

So I decided to trawl the 'net for different types of horses-and-pulleys. Simple as they are, there are a lot of different styles "out there".

A "horse" is, in principle, no more than a dowel with a hole in the middle and a slit, knob or something to stop the shaft-connectin cords from falling off.. A horse should be about the length of the heddles used – or longer. (On old looms the horses are often quite a bit longer.)

Some are quite ornate, some are strictly utilitarian.
These two styles are lifted from Blomqvist/Nordiska (made by Glimåkra) and AK:s snickeri (aka Öxabäck), respectively:

However, no horses function without a pulley, over which they are connected. Pulleys can be small(ish) and connected to the loom just by cords, or they can be bigger, having a hole through which the top cross-member of the loom can pass.
Glimåkra used to use the free-hanging pulleys – this picture is lifted from a for-sale ad on the 'net. I have no idea how old this loom is – in fact, I don’t know that it is a Glimåkra, but that’s what the seller says:

Some other examples, most of them lifted from ads:
A small "no-name", no age given (50-ies, 60-ies?)

Probavly a very old loom, which has some curious pulleys (they are double, both the same size. What is the other pulley for?). The shafts hanging every which-way is typical of CB looms without a warp. Unless they are stabilized with a shaft-holder, of course.

These pictures are from Madesjö museum (I have written about it before)

From the same trip, a five-shaft pulley used as if it were a "normal" one:

(To use it for 5 shafts, the fifth is generally placed at the back, with a cord from the shaft to the hole that I nearly point at. It can be tricky to get it balanced...)

This is just a pulley, again from an ad. The seller just calls it "a detail from an antique loom", and wants to sell them one by one. (Pulleys always come in pairs, horses always in, hm, "foursomes"(?))

(There is a storm brewing outside - let's hope it will not fell too many trees and cut the power, like the one in '05. But the windows are starting to rattle...)

What time can do

Other than gallivanting around, I have done some weaving, too!

I planned this double-layer scarf, and decided it would do well on the AVL. As it is so much more work to weave with the double-box, I usually change to the single-box when I don't need two shuttles.
The double-box attachment had been sitting in a dark corner for several months, but now I took it out and mounted it. And found... the rubber picker-returns were completely unusable, both of them. Only time had eaten them - they were relatively new when I last used them. And I had only one spare spring.
Obviously, it was time to do some radical thinking (and also find a fast fix). While still thinking about possible "final solutions", here is my fast fix:

Yes, buttonhole elastic and a pin.
It works quite well, especially when I had devised a "deflector shield" to ensure that the shuttle could not be trapped under the picker.

But I am still pondering a final solution... or at least a solution with springs that will only deteriorate with actual usage. I'll keep you posted.

Another trip

Yesterday I went to visit with Monica at Madesjö museum, where she sometimes weaves.
We admired the huge loom - look at this fantastic beater, for instance:

(We also failed to understand some of it’s ... features?. But we agreed that we, both of us, do not like a sloping warp. Whatever the old books say, we both prefer our warps to be horizontal!)

After that, we went on to her guild room, with a gazillion looms, many of which had (shaft) draw attachments. I was surprised to see the drawlooms had no (or very short) warp extensions.

BUT... there was this fantastic old loom (which has me in it):

Look at the details:
It has five-shaft pulleys:

I liked the nice pattern the height-adjustments on the beater swords:

And... to prove it: here is Monica herself, in the middle of all the looms:

Traditional warp tensioning systems

There has been a discussion on WeaveTech about warp advancing systems for Swedish looms, and now I have some pictures from "then" to "now".

When I learnt to weave, I went to a school with only "modern" looms – mostly Glimåkra, but also some Öxabäck. All had the now most ususal ratchet-and-pawl system for both warp and cloth beams. Several showed signs of the cord arrangement for releasing the warp beam, but the cords were all gone – "they never functioned well, anyway", said our teachers.

Grenander-Nyberg shows some old "pre-ratchet" arrangements, in the book Så vävde de (ISBN 91-36-00596-7):

When I bought my first loom, it had another system: it had a "crennelated crown" on the warp beam, and a long handle that was maneuvred from the weaving position. (I have long replaced that warp beam, so the picture is taken in the attic – beam only)

The handle, at the weaver’s end, rested in a, well, hook, I suppose:

(If you look closely, you can see the "loom-foot Stadig" under the loom. I love them!!!)

At the cloth beam, there is a ratchet, made from an old saw blade:

The system worked well, once I had adjusted to the fact that the shortest warp-advance was on the long-ish side. (Maybe it would have been better to have several hooks, as on the diagram above?)

Later, I wanted a double warp beam, and ordered "the whole caboodle" from Öxabäck. That included the back uprights, two warp beams and two back beams.

The old warp beam was mounted with an odd arrangement – it was sort-of hung up with two removable brackets on the back of the loom. Here is the inside of the frame:

The bench that came with the loom was ok – but one day I found this:

The seat is triangular, slightly concave and padded. The height is adjustable. And the best: it rocks!!! I can lean over a bit, and it leans with me. Unfortunately, it can’t be used with the AVL, as the foot rest is too low (or the stool has to sit too far back).

Oooops – I forgot!

Tomorrow is the "culture day" – how could I forget?

What to do? What to bring? And it is almost 4 already...

Fish out the old Göta – not my favourite, but in many ways easier to handle than the table loom.
Not many heddles – and not much time; so why not weave for an experiment...

but this time in wool-only, hoping for an interesting result

Unfolded Göta at the kitchen table, helpers in attendance:

A while later: weaving started, waiting for tomorrow

Watch this space!

One neat trick – and a fly-shuttle mechanism

Starting with the "neat trick": over on Weavolution, Sally posted a trick to keep some order when weaving with several shuttles. Here it is – scroll down to the last picture.
As my warps often are wide enough to take several "idle" shuttles (and as I seldom bother about catching idle wefts... lazy, what more can I say?) , I seldom see idle shuttles as a problem.
But now – now I have the tail end of the honeycomb samples still on the loom (did I say lazy?) – and: the main reason for it still being there is that it is too narrow to handle the idle shuttles... So I adapted Sally’s idea (why didn’t I think of that, myself???) – here it is, not elegant, but functional:

(No, I don't use the fly-shuttle(s) for narrow warps; it doesn't work very well and is far more trouble than it is worth.)

(Then, on WeaveTech, we got this link to a short video, showing a very elegant and simple solution. Enjoy!)

There is also a discussion going on Weavolution on flying shuttles and mechanisms for "flying" them. I tried to photograph mine, but there isn’t enough space behind the loom to get it all in one picture. (And, yes, there is way too much in the background to make a "good picture" - .)
Mine is a side-pull, which means you flick the handle to the right to propel the shuttle to the right, and vice versa. (With the center-pull mechanism, pictured on the Weavo thread above, you flick the handle downwards to propel both pickers at the same time.)
So: here is the left-hand side of the loom:

The right side (couldn’t get high enough contrast, so the cords are sort-of-highlighted)

A detail from the right-hand side:

My loom* has an overhead beater – the top arrow points at the beater sword(?) – the bottom arrow points to the picker. There is no stop at the outside end of the box – the cord is short enough to stop the picker from falling out.

When I mount the double-box next time, I will take pictures of that, too.

* My loom is an AVL PDL - an older cousin to this one.