Backwards compatible
Dec. 18th, 2025 08:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
merrileemakesI have a wild plan. I've barely touched my 4 shaft loom this year. I cut a warp off it in the middle of the year that had been sitting for months, and which I'd put on in 2024. I think I just don't have the brain to do anything complicated. So here's my crazy idea: I'm gonna convert it back to a 2 shaft loom for a bit.
I have the parts. I can rebuild her. But it's a crazy idea because it's a truth universally acknowledged that a weaver in possession of a loom must be in wont of a more complicated loom. Going backwards is anathema.
But I have some prewound warps in pretty colours and fancy yarns and I want to weave them into fabric. Cool cool, can't I do that with my loom as it currently is?
Well, yes. But it will be nicer weaving lots of plain weave on the Saori as a 2 shaft.
The Saori loom with the 4 shaft conversion is a sinking shed loom. You use the foot treadles to pull the shafts down, some cords run over some wooden pulleys and a spring stretches. When you take your foot off the treadle the spring recoils and the shaft snaps back up. It's a bit noisy, with the spring and the vibration of all the metal heddles, even when though I've lubricated the pulleys so the wood no longer squeaks.
The Saori loom as it comes out of the box is a simple countermarche loom. (Although 'countermarche' and 'simple' rarely go together in a sentence because these are the most complicated flavour of floor loom). You pull a shaft down with a foot pedal, that shaft is connected to the other one via a rope that goes around a beam, and pulls the other shaft up. (It get complicated when you have 16 shafts and they're all connected to each other in various combinations and you use a treadle and a whole bunch of shafts go either up or down).
Both shafts move in an almost silent, fluid way.
I've never woven on my Saori loom as a 2 shaft, but I have used one at a workshop and I just loved the moment. So I'm gonna try and get my loom (temporarily) back to that state.
Right. Here we go. Here's the loom as it currently is.
Disconnect all the treadles (they have a little metal clip through a metal loop - super easy to do).
Secure the springs of the 4 shafts through a very complicated process of putting a nail through a hole and then the spring loops.
Ha. It'd been so long since I'd used my Saori loon that I totally forgot that it's designed for transformations such as this. In fact, it's the only loom I know of designed to allow projects to be switched out halfway through!
So it was actually super easy to remove the 4 shaft conversion and add the 2 shafts back. The hardest bit would've been converting the treadles over but that's totally optional so (elected not to do that). I actually undid some screws on the top of the loom to remove the top beam (the castle) before I realised that I didn't even have to do that!
So here's the 4 shaft kit out.
So now, what to weave with my 2 shaft loom! I bought it second hand and it came with a few pre-wound warps so I decided to use those up. Here's the one I'm starting with, 6m of vibrant silk.
Using a pre-wound warp saves about half the time of making and beaming a regular warp, because they're really well designed. They come already on a cardboard tube that you slide on to the back beam of your loom. The start of the warp is secured with sticky tape to keep everything orderly and the threads in order. You grab the tape and pull it up and over your loom, then snip the threads off in small groups.
Then you use a long hook to thread both the reed and the heddles at the same time, which is a game changer. Normally you would do this one at a time (or in some cases of back to front warping, you thread the reed twice.
The warping process is also super secure and you can walk away from your loom at any time. It took me a couple of days to thread but that was no big deal.
Come back next time to see what relaxed and chill weaving I start! (Spoiler alert: I am my own worst enemy).
I have the parts. I can rebuild her. But it's a crazy idea because it's a truth universally acknowledged that a weaver in possession of a loom must be in wont of a more complicated loom. Going backwards is anathema.
But I have some prewound warps in pretty colours and fancy yarns and I want to weave them into fabric. Cool cool, can't I do that with my loom as it currently is?
Well, yes. But it will be nicer weaving lots of plain weave on the Saori as a 2 shaft.
The Saori loom with the 4 shaft conversion is a sinking shed loom. You use the foot treadles to pull the shafts down, some cords run over some wooden pulleys and a spring stretches. When you take your foot off the treadle the spring recoils and the shaft snaps back up. It's a bit noisy, with the spring and the vibration of all the metal heddles, even when though I've lubricated the pulleys so the wood no longer squeaks.
The Saori loom as it comes out of the box is a simple countermarche loom. (Although 'countermarche' and 'simple' rarely go together in a sentence because these are the most complicated flavour of floor loom). You pull a shaft down with a foot pedal, that shaft is connected to the other one via a rope that goes around a beam, and pulls the other shaft up. (It get complicated when you have 16 shafts and they're all connected to each other in various combinations and you use a treadle and a whole bunch of shafts go either up or down).
Both shafts move in an almost silent, fluid way.
I've never woven on my Saori loom as a 2 shaft, but I have used one at a workshop and I just loved the moment. So I'm gonna try and get my loom (temporarily) back to that state.
Right. Here we go. Here's the loom as it currently is.
Disconnect all the treadles (they have a little metal clip through a metal loop - super easy to do).
Secure the springs of the 4 shafts through a very complicated process of putting a nail through a hole and then the spring loops.
Ha. It'd been so long since I'd used my Saori loon that I totally forgot that it's designed for transformations such as this. In fact, it's the only loom I know of designed to allow projects to be switched out halfway through!
So it was actually super easy to remove the 4 shaft conversion and add the 2 shafts back. The hardest bit would've been converting the treadles over but that's totally optional so (elected not to do that). I actually undid some screws on the top of the loom to remove the top beam (the castle) before I realised that I didn't even have to do that!
So here's the 4 shaft kit out.
So now, what to weave with my 2 shaft loom! I bought it second hand and it came with a few pre-wound warps so I decided to use those up. Here's the one I'm starting with, 6m of vibrant silk.
Using a pre-wound warp saves about half the time of making and beaming a regular warp, because they're really well designed. They come already on a cardboard tube that you slide on to the back beam of your loom. The start of the warp is secured with sticky tape to keep everything orderly and the threads in order. You grab the tape and pull it up and over your loom, then snip the threads off in small groups.
Then you use a long hook to thread both the reed and the heddles at the same time, which is a game changer. Normally you would do this one at a time (or in some cases of back to front warping, you thread the reed twice.
The warping process is also super secure and you can walk away from your loom at any time. It took me a couple of days to thread but that was no big deal.
Come back next time to see what relaxed and chill weaving I start! (Spoiler alert: I am my own worst enemy).
