The Tension is Gone!

As a rug weaver, I find some parts of the weaving process more fun than others. One of my least favorite parts of the whole deal has always been warping the loom. There are just so many things that can go wrong, and a less-than-ideal tension box held on with a frustrating clamp gave me nightmares and daymares about the whole deal. I dreaded the warping process.

Until now.

My father in law fashioned a new tension box AND a slide that clamps on the back beam and stays there through the whole warping process. When I need to move the tension box over two inches to wind the next section, I no longer have to unclamp the idiot clamp, move the tension box, refasten the clamp, drop the clamp and/or the tension box, and start the whole process over.

Once I attach the slide, it stays on through the whole process. Small adjustments to the positioning of the tension box are now easy-peasy. Just slide the tension box slightly to the left or right.

Yes, that is a sawed-off Goody comb serving as the reed. Why do you ask? I suppose we do tend to make do with what is at hand.

And details such as the wooden support (so that my spool rack doesn't tip over) are an added bonus.


It was a cooperative venture, this making of a box that takes away my tension. My father-in-law did the sawing, glueing and sanding. But my mother-in-law, herself a daughter of a weaver, helped with the design. I've never seen a sliding tension box, but she remembered her mother had one. (Where it got to, I'd like to know...)

It couldn't have been fashioned any better if it had been the 14th prototype--they nailed it on the first try. Even the Goody comb, by some luck or God's grace, has just the right spacing to lay those threads down as neatly as I've ever seen.

The tension is gone.