Equipment Fail Part II

Turns out my adventures with the loom were not over once the fly shuttle was working properly once again.

As part of the diagnostic process Doug had turned up the oil flow on the oiler and while following hoses hither and thither I guess the routing of the exhaust hoses got disturbed.

All of that is to say that when I started weaving in earnest yesterday, I noticed that there was a great deal of oil all over the right hand side of the loom.

A very great deal.  In fact, it was fairly dripping off the metal rollers and loom cross members, although it looks like it missed the cloth.  I'll find out when I take it off the cloth storage beam.  If there is some oil on the cloth I'm hoping that I'll be able to scour it out in the wet finishing.  :(

It would appear that one or more of the hoses actually wormed its way out of the jug used to catch the exhaust so that the oil was simply spraying out into the air.  Either that or it was spraying out of the jug itself.   Or both.

Needless to say I did not weave today at all as Doug was working today.  He got the hoses sorted out tonight, turned down the oil flow and tomorrow I'll start weaving again, this time watching to see if there is further spray back from the exhaust hoses.

The photo above isn't in focus - it was really hard to crouch down beside the loom and get a photo of the tangle of hoses on the right side of the loom.  The black hoses are the air supply, the white/clear ones are the exhaust hoses.

Again, this photo doesn't tell the whole story as there are yet more hoses at the front of the loom too.

When the loom is working properly it's a joy to weave on.  But when you add this much mechanical and pneumatic assistance, there are times when it does go wrong.  Unfortunately I'm not a very patient person so the process last week of figuring out what was wrong and then having to wait while Doug found the correct parts and fixed it was very stressful for me.  :(

However rather than fret about it today I went pressing, then came home and worked on Magic edits, did some spinning, read for a while, visited with my friend across the street and even did a bit of fringe twisting.  So it wasn't an unproductive day - just one without weaving.  Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to finish the first Fox Fibre cloth and start on the next one.

Mechanical Assistance

I wanted to show the rat's nest of hoses and fittings of the air assist system, but this photo really doesn't do it justice - it all looks quite tame and tidy here.  Believe me, it is much more tangled and complex than this photo actually shows!


Currently reading Ghost Story by Jim Butcher

Four Boxes

Someone emailed me today asking if the four box fly shuttle was really useful or if it was 'overkill' as her friends were advising her. :)

When I ordered the loom originally (1983) I ordered it with the double box fly shuttle. Over the years, I found the double box useful even though I didn't use it all of the time.

When I ordered the air assist for the loom in the late 1990's, I was weaving for a fashion designer and quite often fiddling around with 3 and sometimes 4 shuttles. It made sense for me to upgrade to the four box fly shuttle to accomodate the designs I was weaving for my client so that I could weave them more efficiently.

After having AVL assure me it would be impossible to fit the four boxes to my loom, I ordered it anyway and Doug found a way to fit it on the underslung beater of my loom.

I then challenged him to come up with a way to change the boxes using the air assist system. Again he was assured by 'experts' that it would be impossible, and again he found a way. :D

Quite frankly I haven't been using the fly shuttle much for the last 3 years as I've been mostly weaving scarves and hand throwing. But that's the thing about tools. They wait very patiently for when they are needed again.

This project is using 7 shuttles. I'm winding the metallic by hand on the pirn because it won't work on the industrial pirn winder, so I have one AVL shuttle and 6 of the industrial shuttles. Four of the shuttles are in the boxes, the others are parked on the stool next to me and I change them out as required.

I expect that the yarns trailing toward the stool are visible in the enlarged picture. I stopped weaving tonight after the 8th headdress because I need to wind more of the metallic. Plus I'd made such good progress that it felt like time to quit and work on the transcription of WeaveCast episode 35. I've been wanting to listen to the interview with Tom Beaudet for a long time, but just haven't had the time to do that until now.

But to answer the question of whether or not the four boxes are useful? It depends. If you need them, you really need them. If you don't - well, they won't complain if you don't use them. :)