Getting ready to try sectional warping on my TC2 – this time using linen warp, a section box and spool rack. I’m still supporting my back beam in my Delta loom’s supplementary warp beam spot like the other off-loom attempts. The twist this time is that I have created section disks with my laser cutter. The disk slides in the extrusions and are held apart by dowels. I can use different length dowels to vary the width of each section (or at least that is the plan). I will tie a leading string to one of the dowels in each section to connect the bout and allow it to reach closer to the heddles. I think I have mentioned that I hate waste…
Here’s the sectional disk layout. I laser cut 23 of them from 3mm black acrylic.
Section plan sorted (last time I used Louet “U”s in wood slats I laser cut and attached to the extrusion, see this post).
Next up, winding 90 tubes for 2 inch sections at 45 ends per inch. I am planning a longish warp so I settled on 400 yard tubes. I had a lot of Brassard tubes so I custom made a support axel and “gate” to convert my Dreaming Robots cone winder to a tube winder. Thanks to Vampy for the split arm tube holder model. The Dreaming Robots yarn counter stops the winder when the specified length is reached. Here’s a video of the winder in action:
For the most part, although it is difficult to get anything done in 5 minute increments between tube changes, this process went fairly well. A few challenges:
- I only had 40 tubes so I had to 3D print 50+
- I 3D printed a customized tube support to fine tune and more consistently manage the yarn placement on the tube.
- Sometime I got a bum tube wind for reasons that did not seem consistent. i wound the rejects as bobbins since I am planning to do, among other things, polychrome summer and winter.
- After 88 tubes, with 2 to go, the winder arm broke so I had to reprint Vampy’s model – this time in PETG.
- Finally got all 90 tubes wound.
Next I will weigh them to double check the consistency then reconfigure my spool rack to hold 90 instead of 72 tubes.
Between finally warping V3 and now I have a small amount of warp left on my loom that I need to weave off before I can tie on. Getting there.
I’ll document the warping process soon. In the meantime, here are a few pics of the tube production.
