Portable, collapsible warping board!

June 28, 2011

I made myself a portable warp board today.  I haven't used it yet, but I think it will work.  The four boards have holes their entire length and are infinitely adjustable.  The drinking straws are for protecting the yarn from the threads on the bolts.  The short bolts are only for stability.  When finished winding the warp...unscrew the bolts, take the 4 boards (which were cut to size) and they fit perfectly in the bottom of the tool box I will be carrying my weaving tools in.
 

I also got 2 more dowels cut so that I now have 3 full backstrap loom bars.  WoooHooo!  Got some small c clamps for holding the warp board steady and hooking up the loom as well.  When necessary.  

I am working hard at making my art very portable in preparing for the impending move.

Foot note:

For my portable warp board I bought bolts/screws that could be counter sunk into the wood.  Then instead of counter sinking them, I put a washer on both sides of the wood.  Then the screw goes right up into the washer closest to the wood and REALLY stabilizes it.  I also made sure that the guy at Home Depot who put the holes into the wood did not make the holes very much larger than the screw.  They fit kind of snug (no wallering around), also helping to avoid the leaning.  Each of the boards were stacked on top of each other so that all of the holes lined up as well as possible.  

Yesterday I did take a dremel and make the holes slightly larger as I was having trouble getting the screws in and out easily.  Basically I used a sanding bit and just smoothed the inside of the hole, making it every so slightly larger and less likely to catch on the sides of the screw as it goes through the hole.  

I have used it a couple of time so far and I am happy to report that it works like a charm.

I tend to wind very tight so I am very pleased that the bolts don’t lean. Especially since with backstrap weaving the warp is one long continuous thread. You don’t cut and tie on, which means if there is a loose spot the warp is basically unusable, unless you want to fight with it the entire time. I have ruined alot of warps trying to learn this consistency of tension. Fortunately I have learned to spot it before I put it onto the loom bars and I can just unwind it and rewind it. Lately it has been going better. I have found that one of the things that helped me was to stop switching back and forth between different looms. Now that I am mostly sticking to the backstrap, my skills are improving.