I made a loom today :)
I have been planning on making a loom I can use specifically for tablet weaving (aka card weaving), but hadn't gotten around to it. But when I suddenly had a free hour this morning, I ran over to Hardel's Lumber and bought stuff! This was not entirely off the cuff design- I have been looking at pictures of tablet weaving looms for a long time. So I knew what I was going to make, even if it took me a while to get here.
It took about an hour to put together, and its pretty simple. And pretty! The red is the natural color of this wood, padouk.
To make it, I had the shop cut me a piece three feet long, then had them take off four pieces from one end: two @ 1.5 inches wide and two @ 2 inches wide. The 2 inch wide pieces became the uprights the warp is stretched across. They are attached with screws to the base. The 1.5 inch wide pieces are laying flat at the ends, with the wingnuts and bolts, and are the tensioning devices.
I am sure I will discover some "should-haves" as I work on it, but the simplicity should work in my favor.
(The work I stuck on for right now is a piece I started in a class with Linda Hendrickson. It is destined to become a leash for my pug dog named Zaboo.)
Here is a close up of the end so you can see the gorgeous color of the wood!
Total cost: $27, of which about half was the cost for the wood. A piece of nice strong maple or oak would have been less spendy. But pretty!
Edit: As I was cleaning up all the pretty little wood dust, It suddewnly struck me that this gorgeous colorful wood may not be colorfast. So I wiped a piece of white cloth against and Nope! Not colorfast LOL I will need to add a sealer.
So I have two questions for anyone out there:
#1 What sealer does anyone recommend for this? I may go for a UV sealer even, so the color stay all bringt.
#2 I am not sure how to keep the bolts on the tensioner from slipping out the bottom. I did a simple countersink on the botton, so they are flush with the bottom, but my hopeful attempt to wood-glue isn't really working, as you might imagine. I am not a wood worker, so am winging it and making things up as I go. Any advice is of interest.
Thanks!
EDIT:
I made some adjustments and added photos in a later post.