Weaver's Friend Progress

The Weaver's Friend loom is still in pieces, but I am slowly making progress on its restoration. I could have just reassembled it and started weaving, but where is the fun in that? I know myself well enough to know I wouldn't enjoy working on a loom that didn't feel nice. If the wood looks dirty or rough, it would bother me.

Here are the little steps I have accomplished so far.

I chose something simple to start. This handle and pawl only needed a light brushing before a coat of spray paint.

This is the part Bob made to replace the broken one. I did get a coat of stain on it yesterday, so it doesn't look so naked.

The cast iron parts on both frame ends were removed and painted.

The bottoms of the corner posts were originally painted black but much of the paint had worn off.  Here is one end drying after a new coat of paint.

Both end pieces were painted with a dark red trim around the frame. I mixed some paint and touched it up with a couple coats. It is probably a bit brighter than the original color.  I did tone it down with some brown.

The opposite end. The stenciling on the bottom rail needs some touch-up.

Not a perfect touch-up, but legible now.

 This is the cloth beam.  The ends couldn't be removed without stripping the flat head screw slots, so I just covered the wood and spray painted the ends.The ropes were not in good condition and needed to be removed.

The ropes were nailed into recessed holes and I couldn't pull them out because the wood was so hard.

My neighbor happened to come by so I enlisted him to try and remove the nails. All it needed was some muscle!

Various other parts were painted.  I wish I knew the names for them. Some of them do have a letter and number cast into them, for identification purposes when the Reed Loom Manufacturing Company was still in business.

Back beam brackets. Numbered L23 and L24.

Shaft brackets and screws. They attach to the bottoms of the shafts and are the connections to the four pitmans. Number L8.

There is a little more done, but I still need to download the photos, so I will save it for the next post.

Weaver's Delight Restoration - Varnishing and Painting

Sore hands again tonight.  My right thumb just doesn't like some of the things I do!  One of them is hand sanding.  These are the shaft end brackets, with the light coating of rust removed, primed, and here with a pretty coat of aluminum gloss paint.

Styrofoam works well to hold screws and bolts for painting.  These are all the screws for attaching the end brackets on the shafts.  Twelve per shaft, so with that many, I will definitely be using my cordless screwdriver.  I have one shaft ready to go, under the styrofoam.  The wood for the other three still needs another coat of varnish, so I will do that tomorrow, if the three grandchildren that will be here give me enough time.

I also got another coat of the green paint on some of the cast iron pieces I showed in the previous post.

The second coat of varnish made a lot of difference in the smoothness of the wood.  I very lightly sanded with black sandpaper after the first coat dried.  After a second coat, I sanded (just barely, with worn out sandpaper) just enough to bump off any dust, and  make the wood smooth.

This is me, starting to attach the washed twill tape strips to one bar of the sectional warping beam with an electric staple gun.

The wood was very hard, so I had to finish driving the staples into it with a hammer.

There is a right and wrong direction to attach the tapes.  Before I removed them from the bar, I made sure to mark which side of it the end of the tape needed to be. Otherwise, the straps won't wrap around the beam correctly, and the buckles on the end of the straps will hit the wood.

After I got them all attached, I wound each one around the bar and tied them down with some thrums (scrap pieces of yarn from a previous weaving project) so they don't get in the way when I assemble the warp beam.

I will show the proper direction for the tapes in a future post, when I assemble the sectional beam.

Bed is calling!