Yep. I'm not giving up on it quite yet. I will re-watch the video and see if it is just me or it's a piece of crap. lol.
Hi Deb, can you say more about Don's paper holder invention. I hang mine below the warp beam with velcro straps and my lease sticks. Sloppy.
Hey, Kit. Sorry I missed this earlier. What do you want to know?
I think I posted the whole contraption here, somewhere, but I’ll email you the pdf.
News from the denter....
I got one too now and I'm really happy with it.
I watched the AVL video and was confused when I realized she took the thread with her left hand , laid it in the notch on the back side of the reed and took it out in front of the reed also with her left. No option for me as I like to hold and keep the threads with my left as Jane showed us.
But it is not easy to get the thread out of the notch without fingers.
After a few fails I found a way that works fine for me.
My left hand acts as Jane learned us. When the thread is through the slot of the reed but still in the notch of the denter, my left fixes the tip of the denter on the backside of the reed without letting go the other threads. My right hand can then let go the handle and pull the thread out of the notch. Then it graps again the handle and pushes the denter back into the next slot. That works fine and is really fast.
Two other things bothered me first.
I thougt the tip had to be in its right place between the thread to be sleyed next and the ones already sleyed, not caught somewhre between. And as the tip is quite long that was really tedious. But I realized it doesn't matter as it won't bother the other threads and pick only the one put in the notch so you don't have to deal with that.
Sometimes there is resistance pulling back the denter, it is stuck. I learned to push it forward again into the slot, then it moves smoothly back again.
For me there is one more advantage. Sleying is my least popular job as I'm small and find it really unconfortable to work with my left arm laid over the reed/beater as my arm seems too short. I tried a higher chair and moved the blocking pin for a few holes to set the shafts higher but it was still unconfortable.
Now the movement of the beater is much shorter, I can sit further into the loom and this makes it much more pleasant for me.
This was quite hard to explain in english, I hope you can follow what I wanted to say. Please ask if it was too confused or unclear.
Thanks for reporting back, Catherine. I have not tried mine again as my last two warps have been in an 8 dent reed.
I’m going to have to watch the video again and see if I can get it to work.