My beautiful, long awaited Oxaback loom should arrive Monday, June 20. It has cleared customs and is supposedly being picked up Thursday, June 16. I have no warping accessory.

Should I begin with,a warping board, or a warping reel, or go all out and get a warping mill?  Looking at the various choices they all seem to have about a  4" width of warp wound around. Is this the amount of thread one owrks with at a time, and then begins widing on another length of warp around the mill until the entire width is warped? Is there a video I should buy to help me get started?  Any explnation you can give would be most appreciated.

 

Passapman

Comments

Fri, 06/17/2011 - 13:16

Dawn McCarthy

How did you previously make your warps?  A basic warping board will be sufficient to start with.  You can make warps up to 14 yards in length.  If the project is quite wide and it is difficult to fit on the board, you can divide the warp into sections, for example, your warp is 50 inches wide, make 2 separate warps each 25 inches wide.  You would dress the loom treating them as one warp.  Even though the pegs are approx 4 inches deep you can fit a lot of warp around them!  I built my own warping mill which can fit a very long warp but the issue of the peg depth remains.  For very wide warps there is the option of using a sectional beam.  

Dawn

 

Fri, 06/17/2011 - 17:47

passapman (not verified)

Dawn, I have never warped a loom before? This is my first loom. I will borrow a warping board. 14 yards should be enough to get me started.

Recommended book or DVD?

Thanks

Fri, 06/17/2011 - 21:08

Claudia Segal (not verified)

Do I remember correctly, your Oxaback is a countermarche/counterbalance loom so my recommendations are based on that.  I find Laila Lundell's book very useful for everything.  Specifically for warping, I strongly recommend Joanne Hall's new book, Learn to Warp Your loom.  After weaving for several years, I found many helpful tips and hints in her book which you can buy HERE.

As for DVDs, I would recommend Becky Ashenden's DVD which is HERE.

These are my personal favorites.

Claudia

Sun, 06/19/2011 - 16:50

lkautio (not verified)

Most people start with a board, because it is cheap and easy to make on your own.  After you have been weaving a bit, try someone's reel.  I can make a warp on the reel in a third or less of the time on the warping board - and it does not hurt my back or arms.  Once I had a reel I never went back to the board.  Another possibility is a warping wheel, but it is even more expensive and does not offer the average weaver an advantage over the reel.  It works as a less cumbersome replacement for shorter warps for traditional sectional warping with spools and rack.

Laurie Autio

Sun, 06/19/2011 - 19:35

MaryMartha

If you do opt for the warping board, I have found Laura Fry's youtube video demonstration quite helpful.  There was a board vs reel (mill) discussion over in the efficient weaver group some time ago. You can read it here.  One thing I learned from that discussion was that warping boards come in two flavors:  removable pegs for flexibility (Glimakra, Leclerc?) or fixed pegs for rigidity (Schacht, Harrisville?).  I opted for the former.  It is nice to get a couple unneeded pegs out of the way.

Becky Ashendon's video is generally wonderful, and includes a very detailed demonstration of how to use a reel/mill, but does not specifically cover warping boards.  Peggy Ostercamp's video "warping the loom back to front" also contains a warping board demonstration, including how to make two crosses.  To me, that is the most valuable part of the video.  When it comes to beaming, I prefer the Ashendon video because her demonstration loom looks like my loom, where the Ostercamp video shows a jack loom with underslung beater.