Watcha Makin'?

[SwampDonkey]

Finished sanding those shaft sticks, drilled 136 holes into 8 new (extra) treadles this afternoon. They need sanding to. Again, nothing too exciting about a pile of sticks. 

[Wlmedley]

Finally got my stool finished and I like how it turned out so I guess I'll use this one to measure and make three more. It's been pretty cold so it's taken awhile to get finish to dry. Going to take Tom's advice on the other three and cut all the pieces out and do any epoxy work before assembly. Maybe it will warm up some so I can raise garage door and get some planing done.

[SwampDonkey]

More sanding this morning on them new treadles (8). Have to plane down and drill some extra holes in the old ones (10 treadles) to accommodate the 8 extra shafts. Will try to finish up the rug on the loom this week to continue with the upgrade. 

[SwampDonkey]

Cut threads on 3 rods for these pulleys this morning. They'll control 16 shafts on the loom.

[21incher]

A firewood mallet. Had some old beech in the barn and a rosewood wedge. Got some  mortisees to make and spiders to squish after reading  @Yellohammers thread then seeing a daddy long legs in my shop 😬.

[SwampDonkey]

Something to put you to sleep. 

https://youtu.be/Ko_SQKRIYDU

[Brad_bb]

Did you build that loom?  I assume the warp threads are the white base or foundation threads.  I don't know what weft is.  Warping I think is how the warp threads are spread for the shuttle to be passed through?  When the colored thread shuttles are passed through, in the end what happens to the ends of those threads?  Are they just trimmed on the outside of the rug?  Please forgive my ignorance on this.

[SwampDonkey]

Yes Brad, I built the loom over here.

https://www.forestryforum.com/board/index.php/topic,54311.0.html

And yes the warp is the white threads that run the length of the loom, they are wound on the back roller (this loom has two), then each warp end is threaded into a pattern heddle. Except in this case, some single ends are controlled by several shafts at the back harness, but not all at once. A special tied heddle is used, that has a long eye, the part the warp end must pass through. This allows the warp end to slide up and down in the heddle of adjacent shafts that are not moving. This part of the rug has three of those areas, and using those kinds of long eye heddles allows 3 pattern areas, that would need 24 shafts to move, but only need 8 here. Each time I pull a cord, it is equivalent to moving 3 shafts at once, but physically I'm only moving one. Polyester or tied cotton heddles are hung between two shaft bars, so heddles and those bars together make a shaft. A bunch of shafts is called a harness. I am using two harnesses, each use 8 shafts. One harness uses the treadles underneath to control them (up/down), the other uses draw cords. I'm using the treadles to weave the surrounding black (background color) and the draw cords for the rectangular color areas. They combine to make one shed, the path or opening created that allows the weft yarn on a shuttle to pass through and weave and bind the warp threads when the warp yarns are down at rest and beaten in with the baton (beater). The beater holds a reed that has vertical dents (spaces), where the warp yarn passes and are spaced out at a certain number of ends per inch. The spacing of the warp ends has different affects. Spaced more widely you can get a weft affect like I'm doing, where the weft makes all the pattern and color. If the warp is spaced much tighter the warp is dominant and controlled the pattern and color. If the spacing is about equal to the spacing to that of weft when beaten in (picks per inch), both warp and weft make pattern. In this particular rug, the tail ends of the weft threads when beginning or emptying a shuttle are overlapped with the next when a shuttle is emptied and ends tucked into the layers and hidden from view. I'm using 4 colors here and 4 layers (4 shuttles). Each layer is one color and since it is weft faced weaving I can change the order the colors are woven in or change the tie up of the shafts to move the different colors up in down in those pattern 'blocks. I can have yellow on top now, but if I change the order or if I change the tie up I can send yellow to any of the 3 other layers. With weft faced weaving, you can get solid colors. If I were to use the warp as pattern as well, then the colors would blend in those blocks so you get a dithered affect. This is plain weave, so to the eye the pattern is color driven mostly. Although the construction of the cloth allows me to change which color appears where and when I want. I am now at the end of the rug and I'm weaving solid black. I changed the tie up so the layers exchange or move up or down and stitch or bind with the layers in the previous section, but just where the layers move to their new positions (the transition). So it's like making a pocket, that stitches along the perimeter. I did one more thing, I removed some of those long eyed heddles at the back harness so that each shaft controls the heddles where those color blocks are. So now I have to us 1 draw cord or as many as 7 of them to make pattern in those spot. This would be controlled by one treadle otherwise. But I have 2 harnesses and two different control mechanisms, the treadles are more efficient at moving shafts than draw cords. One treadle moves several shafts. But they only control the front 8 shafts on that harness. Draw cords control the back harness of shafts. My 4 layers would be open at the edges of the rug, except in the way I pass the shuttles when entering and exiting the sheds it closes the edges up or stitches the layers together by my method of handling the shuttles.

This video shows more about the long eyed heddles at the back harness.

https://youtu.be/pBLPpLb2gpw

[gspren]

Swamp, here at the PA State Farm Show they have a "sheep to shaw" contest where they are doing much of what you're talking about. Have you ever seen anything like that?

[SwampDonkey]

I think 50 years ago you could see that here, but from the 80's onward no sheep raised for wool around here, all meat. When I was a kid in the 70's, there were 2 sheep farms within a mile in either direction. And raised for the wool. But the cost of production out paced the returns and people gave up on the wool side. There was a recent little sheep farm 20 miles from here that tried the wool thing. It was short lived. Neighbor here raises sheep for meat where one of them old sheep farms were years ago. The other farm became dairy and now not even that, just a handful of cows for meat and rents land to another couple of beef farmers and a potato farmer.  Farming is a hard old life, not what you read in dreamy magazines. When I was a kid, no one close by here owned a loom or wove. People knit, crocheted, and made quilts and sewed, not a loom to be seen.

Weavers are few and far between. The old guilds near here are long gone.

I learned through books, social media and experimenting.

[aigheadish]

I'm making the pantry better! We have a small closet pantry in the kitchen that had several of those wire shelves which were functional but boring.



My wife wanted initially just wanted some wood to cover the wire but as we discussed it she changed her mind to just making wood shelves. Using lumber that was laying around I framed up some shelves.



She painted it, unfortunately, our walls are a bit crooked but oh well.



And I made use of my new shop space, tools move out and in beautifully! I planed up some wood and made the shelves. Looks nice and should be a bit more space. She's just going to leave them bare wood and I like it!

[SwampDonkey]

Can't go wrong with wood. I have some 4 foot long shelves in the shop with that Melamine boards. I can see 10-12" wide white pine replacing those at some point. :D Sometimes they have 8 ft stuff on sale.

[Larry]

I had a dark corner in the living room that I wanted to get a little more light into. I didn't want to give up space to a floor lamp and didn't have a table for a lamp. After a little thought I came up with the idea of a swinging arm wall lamp. Found some plans for the arm by Christian Becksvoort in FWW. Lots of doodling gave me an idea for the lamp.



The bulb is a reproduction Edison but LED powered. Real low on the Kelvin scale, almost in the range of a candle. The light is a dramatic eye catcher, especially when on with all the shadows playing on the walls.

The swinging arm is the perfect gadget to hang all kinds of pendant lights from. I'm going to try another one in the bedroom.

As normal this thing took lots of time to make. I made a template to cut out the swinging arm on the router and measured drawings so if I make another it will go quite fast.

[doc henderson]

Nice work Larry.  Maybe they will call certain woodworking styles by your name in the future.  

Aig, I like that setup.  Makes it look like the shelves are floating.  Nice and crisp and clean.

[aigheadish]

She done filled 'er up! 

[Old Greenhorn]

Looking good man! Always nice when you can make something you can use daily, especially if it pleases the wife. Win-win!

[SwampDonkey]

Doesn't take long. 

[aigheadish]

Yeah, she's talking about remodeling the bathroom next. It'll be a much bigger Watcha Makin' post, but I'll give it to her, my shower, though the bathroom is pretty big, is one of those tiny square, plastic box showers and it sucks. Only about twice as big as the ones at the campground we went to for the Pig Roast. Much too small. 

[SwampDonkey]

Still planing, drilling and sanding some sticks. I have everything dimensioned now, just a matter of drilling and sanding. Then putting Bertha back to weaving status again. I need a 16 shaft pattern. That takes  112 tie up cords to control the loom and pattern. Lots of tying, but thankfully it's mostly using pegs inserted into button eye cord and into wooden parts (holes). Yarns and heddles besides.

[21incher]

Playing with a new Chinesium router sled that's pretty good and works on any flat bench.

Designed and 3d printed dust hoods and accessories.

Also printed some step wedges with .03 steps to level slabs along with thumbscrews and a wrench.  Going  to adapt this to my mill rails in the spring. Will fit a 5 ft wide or narrower top. Catching 90% of the chips and 100% of the fine dust with the hoods I designed.

[aigheadish]

The cheap and easy way to make my shop chair less bird poo-ey! Until I can get out and prevent the birds from getting in this will work well. It's been leaning against the wall over there for quite a while and I didn't think about tossing it in the rafters to avoid bird doo, until yesterday. Duh. 

[aigheadish]

Score of the day, from a million years ago, here's the windings from a solenoid. Maybe like a pound of pretty fine copper wire. I've been messing around with it for a few months, but mostly just making cables like seen below. I started on a tree and we'll see how it goes.

[SwampDonkey]

Well, today I finished up sanding and drilling on that big pile of 'sticks', next is to apply linseed oil on most, but shellac on what will be 18 treadles (foot levers). Then lug all that bunch of sticks into the house and start 'building'. 

[SwampDonkey]

Old Betha is going to gain some weight. 



From top to bottom.

18 treadles
16 lower lamms
16 upper lamms
16 jacks
48 shaft bars, enough to make 24 shafts.

[aigheadish]

I took a several year break from the lathe, with this piece on it, then proceeded to bury it behind tools and junk. I think it's a chunk of maple, but I'm not positive. 



I finally freed the lathe from its burden of junk so I started messing around again. It was destined to be a shallow bowlish shape until I made the inside thinner than the outside and it blew up on me (not pictured). 

I got back on it today and found some amazing rays and form inside it. I've never seen, as I polished it up, a wood look more like wrinkled silk or something.





I don't know how much you can tell in pictures but it's really neat, wood is incredible! 





The shape doesn't lend itself to anything very useful but boy is it pretty.