Finally, the 54 cm pattern heddles arrived as well as more long eyed ground heddles. I’d hate to be short when warping up as I can’t really just get them from the corner shop! So now I had to get down to the nitty gritty of balancing the height of the ground heddles with the pattern heddles and sort out the lamms and try and create a big enough shed. No small task, I felt. After putting the extra hundred long eyed heddles per ground shaft on, I then tied the lamms to the treadles in the five shaft satin damask tie up with one shed going up and one shed going down per treadle. First disaster.

The Lamms ready to be tied up - twelve in a row!

All the lamms started to have arguments with each other as I only had six holes drilled in the treadles and there were twelve lamms. I had hoped that as only two lamms were tied to each treadle it might work with the small number of holes. Off came the treadles and another six holes per treadle were drilled. I had separated the lamms with Teflon bushes to make their action easier but this did also spread them further apart and I did have the whole twelve lamms on the same plane. Fortunately, the extra drilled holes along with using little pieces of steel rod to hold the texsolv cord in line with the lamm did allow the lamms to slide well past each other. A little adjustment was needed to stop the treadle from hitting a lamm with one particular movement but that bit was easy.

The lamms with their elastic keepers to help return them to the same level and the little bits of steel to allow them to slide past each other

 Next step was to hook up the pattern heddles and string some lines through the ground and the pattern heddles and check out the shed.

Me tying the string onto the warp beam

 I tied on to the front and back beam with some spare strong thread and threaded the heddles in between. I had made a guesstimate of where the pattern shaft hangers should go and this was not too far off so the next thing was fiddle, fiddle, fiddle, to get the pattern sheds at the right height according to the opphamta and damask book.

The path of the threads compared to the direct line from cloth beam to warp beam. Threads sitting in the bottom of the long eyed heddles in the ground and approximately the middle of the small eyed pattern heddles.

Once satisfied with the pattern heddle height and with the ground shed at it’s ( hopefully ) correct height I then pressed the sequence of treadles and “hey presto!” it worked. The threads were swapped at the appropriate moment for the tie down when I pulled a pattern cord to change the position and as much as I can tell without the reed in place, the shed did not look too bad. I do have a nice and thin damask shuttle at the ready.

Pattern threads and ground threads doing their thing!

Seeing those threads move in the way they should was a wonderful feeling – a very satisfying conclusion to a number of  afternoon’s work. Now I had to determine the next step. More lingoes. I was getting a sore hand from flattening the ends of my pieces of steel that are my version of lingoes and I was also sick of blunting drill bits trying to drill through them to attach them with large paper clips to my pattern heddle group so I out sourced the drilling option to my father. Now he is blunting the drill bits and I am taking a break to build up the courage to do the final preparation before warping this loom and really taking the plunge. I have noticed now that the treadles might get in the way of the lingoes on the front pattern shed if I use long ones so the treadles have to come off again and have their ends cut off. Part three is on it’s way!