I am in the process of figuring out a lace draft to put on my countermarche and being lace, its using a zillion heddles on shafts 1 & 2.  When doing something like this on my jack looms, I always expanded out the draft to more shafts, but on a countermarche the one time I tried that I had a horrible time getting everything to balance.  My draft is working out to over 800 heddles, 281 just on shaft 2 alone.  That seems like huge number of heddles on one shaft.  Am I reading more into this than I should, or is this one of the advantages of a CM, and does this mean I have to move all these heddles around?  I currently have 150 heddles on each of the 8 shafts on my loom.  What is the best approach to use??

Theresa in SE Wisconsin - where is is dreary so its a perfect day to draft some light and flirty lace.

Comments

Thu, 10/31/2013 - 16:24

Joanne Hall

on a countermarch is easy if your loom is a Scandinavian loom.  And a countermarch can handle a lot of heddles on a shaft, so there is no need to add extra unnecessary shafts.  Just put more heddles on the shafts as needed.

Joanne

Thu, 10/31/2013 - 18:51

theresasc

So you are saying to go ahead and weave with close to 300 heddles on one shaft?  That just boggles my mind!  I guess I need to change my mindset when doing large projects on my CM.  I keep seeing me trying to lift shafts on my Kessenich jack loom with 280 metal heddles - lol.  My loom is a Cranbrook so I should not have problems moving the heddles around, its just a strange concept to me.

Thu, 10/31/2013 - 20:35

jander14indoor (not verified)

Two things.

I dont' see why such a draft would cause you to split the heddles on two frames on a jackloom.  Whether you lift one shaft with 300 heddles or spread it over two you are still lifting 300 heddles.  And spreading over two seems worse as you are lifting two heddle frames! 

 

Countermarch Loom.  On the drafts I've looked at so far, if you have a ton of heddles on 1, you have a similar ton on 2 (or 7&8 depending on arbitrary preference).  Generally, if 1 is up 2 is down and vice versa.  Of if they move together its generally the same together in which case you could make sure the pattern is threaded so it is a sinking shed instead of rising.  The balance keeps the treadling light.  That's inherent  to a CM loom.

 

Whoops, another thought.  You said you have a Cranbrook.  I assume like mine, that means string or texsolve heddles.  Weigh 100 of those compared to 100 metal heddles.  Not even in the same ballpark.  And as you are splitting the shed, load from the shed thread tension is half what you get from a Jack loom.

 

Jeff Anderson

Livonia, MI

Thu, 10/31/2013 - 22:50

Sara von Tresckow

When weaving lace with lots of heddles on one shaft, it is best to have that shaft at the front rather than the back.

Thu, 10/31/2013 - 22:53

theresasc

I would not have to move heddles.  I played "pick up sticks, err heddles" with metal heddles once and learned that I did not want to play that game anymore.  Moving metal heddles on my jack looms is just asking for trouble.

I am relatively new to countermarche looms, I have only done three or four projects on it, so I am still on a bit of a learning curve.  The one thing that I have found is that it is crazy easy to treadle, surprises the heck out of me every time I go from the CM to one of my jack looms.  

So what I am hearing is to go ahead and move heddles to the shafts I need and to start changing my mindset:-)

 

 

Thu, 10/31/2013 - 22:58

theresasc

Thanks for the tip!  It would seem with each project that I put on this loom I am learning something new.