Loom repairs are getting caught up

I've been semi productive the past week or so with getting my looms usable again.

I lost the bracket to hold my tablet while using the floor size inkle loom, so I made a graph paper holder for it. I'm not sure if I am going to like using it yet, but might try some tonight or tomorrow.

That pattern is from a 10th century (Viking Era) find in Dublin, Ireland. the original piece was about 9mm wide and IRC the pattern came to about 6-7mm long. My attempts at it are not yielding the same width to length ratio, but that is what I'm striving for.


This past week I have been working on the beam gears for a PVC four shaft loom and I installed them yesterday while my internet was down and I couldn't work. I just need to install something for the a ratchet stop for the gears and I can start using it.

I'm going to try a 6" strap hinge, but expect to have to trim it to length.
I want to remake the gears with aluminum, but I might try to find pre-made gears that will fit and just purchase them; pre-made gears will all depend on the price.

Still getting the hang of regular posting, or maybe not..

I need to work on developing a habit of posting more often...

Over this past weekend I tried to get back to working on a four-shaft loom I made out of PVC pipe. I used Dave Holly's book "Building a 4-Shaft PVC Loom" with a few minor deviations, thus it not being completed in a couple of years... I think the book cost me $35 and all of the PVC pipe, a reed and Texsolv heddles ran me around $200 total. It sits behind me on the floor of my office, collecting dust and acting as a table for random stuff..

Over the weekend I worked on making gears for the rollers/beams. It went smoother than I expected, but I ran into the snag of my scroll saw and band saw both having dull blades. The scroll saw blades are on order from Amazon, but the band saw blade is more expensive and I can never remember the size I need to order..

I don't see the gears in my office right now, but I'll be taking pictures of every thing once I get it all assembled and can start doing regular style weaving.


In the mean time I plan to do reproductions of the Saint Cuthbert reliquary bands. I had done a variation on some of the patterns for an SCA project, but those were done with much larger thread and without the 3/1 twill behind the brocade.

I also lost the tablet PC bracket that I made for my big inkle loom, so I'm making a new bracket that will hold graph paper. Most people I see doing brocade and double face use graph paper, so I feel like I'm cheating using Guntram's tablet Weaving Thingy - which I HIGHLY recommend by the way!!!!

I'll try to get pics of the new bracket tonight and post them up.

Tablet woven trim in the style of a Viking era trim

This is my documentation for some weaving I entered in the AEthelmearc A&S Champs this past weekend - I didn't win, I didn't expect to win, I went because a friend goaded me to get out of the house and I knew that I would have a good time once I got there.

I hope the images come in okay.

Introduction:
   This is brocaded tablet woven trim I made for a friend that has an 11th century Irish personae. The original band this is based upon was made of silk thread with gold brocading, it was found in Dublin, Ireland. That piece is believed to date to between the late 10th and early 12th century when Scandinavians played a dominant role in the founding of Dublin as a place to trade slaves and as it’s rulers until the Anglo-Norman invasion in the late 11th century.

Technique/Material Used:
   The original band was made from 31 cards threaded in all four holes and is 9mm wide. The cards were mostly threaded in the S direction, but a portion of them are a mixture of S and Z threading. The brocade thread is “spun-gold”, which is gold foil wrapped around a core of silk thread. The brocade pattern is 18 lines that repeat over and over and has an approximate density of 44 picks per cm. Neither Pritchard nor Spies mention how the brocade is handled at the selvage and I have not seen a photo or the back face of the fragment to try to surmise that for myself – it is unlikely that the brocade thread passed completely thru the selvage as Spies points out that the only example of this happening is one of the Birka finds where it makes a fringe.

   This is half of a trim commission that was requested to be 1-1.5 inch wide. I used #10 crochet cotton for both the warp and brocade weft and #30 for the ground weft to help offset elongation that might be caused by using a #10 ground weft. Neither reference source I have for this piece specifies whether the brocade thread is held down by a single thread per card, both top threads (“double”) or if it passes to the back face so I chose to use single thread tie downs after trying double tie downs; the sample I kept for myself shows how the individual pips in the pattern appear more clearly with single ties downs as opposed to the doubles. This leads me to think that the original probably used single thread tie downs, but I am experimenting with changing my weaving technique to explore several different variables and see how much of a difference they can make.

   After some discussion with Nancy Spies I did some experimenting with warp tension using 100/3 silk thread and Mylar fly fishing tinsel. I managed to reproduce the band and pattern at 11mm wide and roughly the same length, maybe a bit longer; so I know that I need to use even finer thread to achieve the same width as the historical remnant, possibly 120/3 will do it. The elongated pattern sections are where I had my warp tension VERY TIGHT, then I eased that off and did another section and eased it off again and another section, etc… The shortest section was accomplished by having the tension so loose that the cards were hanging at about 45 degrees under their own weight.

   I want to see how dramatically warp tension, burnishing, and the use of a beater sword will affect the pattern visibility and recognition after the silk decays. I’ve started a new band with 60/2 silk thread and using same pattern, but I’m using measured weights to control the tension and card skew to see just how little weight it will take to get the period warp/weft ratios. I’ll also experiment with using a beater sword in addition to just beating in with the shuttle to see how that affects pattern elongation. Most of the brocade thread will be a modern “spun-gold” replacement that is intended for embroidery work, but I also plan to do sections using silver wire. I am going to use fire to burn away the silk warp to see if I can replicate the pattern imprinting in the wire has been used to determine the Bifrons, Birka and Evido patterns.


Pattern B23 from Birka - Birka III


Kentish bands from Bifrons - Crowfoot


Spun Gold - Spies

References:
Pritchard, “Silk Braids and Textiles of the Viking Age from Dublin,” pp.149-156
Spies, “Ecclesiastical Pomp & Aristocratic Circumstance“, pg. 254-255
Geijer, Birka III: Die Textilfunde. Uppsala: Almqvist and Wiksells Boktryckeri, 1938
Crowfoot and Hawkes, “early anglosaxon gold Braids,” Medieval Archaeology Xi (1967)

My weaving sample showing double ties downs on the right and single tie downs on the left:

sorry for the gaps

Wow, it's been far too long since I've used this space... A little catching up is required. The company I work for was bought by a competitor and that forced a stock purge that gave me enough to put down on a house in another state - so I moved... I was put in a different department, doing different stuff, but it allowed me to work from home - the nearest office is two hours away. My GF moved with me and had trouble finding a job, but then landed a good position - then her diabetes went haywire and she had to resign; we got married because having her on my insurance otherwise was WAY expensive. I got re-involved in the SCA and things have been going swimmingly! I'm now a court Baron, I have three AOA level awards (combat, service and art) from the local Kingdom (AEthelmearc) and a GOA level art award (Fluer). I'm squired to an old friend who is a Knight and Duke. I've been giving classes in brocaded tablet weaving and that is where much of my focus has been for the past 5 or so years and likely what at least half of my posts will be about going forward. I haven't been doing any model building or painting in a while, just haven't had the itch since I moved from NY to PA. I still have boat loads of unused stuff and will likely sell some on ebay; I gave a couple pounds of pewter figures (all dark ages stuff) and a plastic viking longship model to an SCA friend because he's more likely to get to painting them long before I will... I now have a bunch of chickens, a couple of ducks and a great dog in addition to the conure we had in NY. I'm hoping to post more regularly, I hope you all enjoy it.

Been away for a while... :-(

I've been absolutely consdumed by my day job most of this year, so I haven't been doing much in the area of gaming or model building...

I've been running a D&D 4e game on Thursday nights and using store bought minis for the most part. I occassionally print out encounter maps and mount them to foamcore, but even that has been few and far between.

We're running Witchlight Hermatage right now and I want to do a spiffy map without dropping the cash on the Dungeon Tiles - while they are AWESOME, I am totally broke!! Fortunately I have access to a large format color printer at work and Visio!

What I did was capture the map image from the PDF I got through D&D Insider and import it into Visio. I stretched the image up to make the grid full size. I then created a 1 inch square with no fill and arrayed it to cover the entire map image...
Set the plotter to my default printer, adjust the page size. print out 2 copies, delte the grid and print a third copy.

I used the gridless copy at the end of our first session for when the characters first get to the hermatage and nothing significant is happening.

The two gridded copies are going to get mounted to foamcore.

I'm going to try to do that this weekend and take pictures to show the process so I can do a write up.

In the mean time I am using some Warhammer Skinks as the Brachmarsh Lizardfolk because I had purchased them last year to build a baby dragon for the Coppernight Hold Dungeon Delve and hadn't gotten around to doing all of them yet - that's a whole different build post.

Dreadnaught stretching part 2

I managed to finish off Brother Captain James' dreadnaught last night...





I cut the aluminum tubes a little shorter and drilled completely through the knee so I could use a much longer central pin to be the major structure for every thing.



Part of doing that included seperating the knee from the pelvis and drilling the holes in the penvis to receive the pin.



I took some thick(ish) copper wire and wrapped it in very thin wire (red magnet wire) to recreate the hydraulic lines. You can see a finished leg here:

The new hydro lines are glued into the holes i drilled previously where the original hydro lines were.

And both finished legs...:


Mounted to the pelvis:



And the finished Dreadnaught - about 3/16" taller:

Taller Dreadnaught?

Brother Captain James came to me on Monday night at Battle for Salvation and asked me to do a conversion for him. He wants to make his dreadnaught taller!! he wants to add about half an inch total to the leg, to keep the overall balance of the piece, I'll have to add length above and below the knee and replaces the hydraulic lines.

I'm not 100% when comes to ID'ing models, but I think it's an old Venerable Dreadnaught...



First thing I did was cut through the three outer hydraulic piston shafts to the foot and then the inner (thicker) piston shaft and my finger! But ONLY on one side!!



I then drill holes into the hydraulics on the leg and foot bracket to accommodate a copper rod that is much smaller than the piston shaft. I often use paper clips to do pinning, but in this case I have some aluminum tube that is very close to the shaft diameter and the copper rod I have slips right inside with almost zero extra space.





It’s tricky to keep the bit centered on the hydraulics and drill in along the center, but it’s worth going very slow!! After I drill in a comfortable distance (a good 3/32” of rod in the hole), I cut of just the piston shaft and leave the outer housing!

Using the uncut side as a base measure, I used 0.001” accurate calipers to measure the exposed piston shafts and added ¼” and cut the aluminum tube to length. I then cut some of my copper rods and slipped them into the holes in the foot bracket and leg.



You’ll notice that the center shaft is a bit larger, but I had some larger rod and tube that is a close match.

I similarly cut away the hydraulic lines and drill into the ports. The bit would have been easier if I had cut through the leg above the knee, but that increases my risk of dropping and losing parts while working the project.

The hydraulic lines will be replaced with either copper rod or thick paper clip wire that has been wound with very fines “magnet” wire to recreate that ridge flex-shaft look. The replacement part will be bent and cut to fit and the starter holes will be enlarged as needed.

I haven’t nailed down exactly how I plan to increase the thigh length, but I have a couple of ideas I’m mulling over..

Hopefully I'll managed to get the finishing update in a day or so and not have another 2 or 3 month.