I am still fretting over the quality of my latest bit of weaving.
The twill line seems to be fairly regular
and the selvedges are OK. What concerns me is the "streaking" effect
that I am getting. Light on dark twills are not that forgiving on irregularity of the
beat. On inspection I can see that the streaks are occuring at fairly regular
1" intervals which probably correspond to the regular advancement of the
temple and the moving forward of the beater.
I suspect that when I get the
piece of the loom I will find some evidence of where the warp has been advanced
every three inches. This is not a smooth
process as the back beam jerks forward when I release the ratchet. Every time I
advance the warp it goes from full
tension to no tension and then back to full tension which is probably not the same
as the original tension.
I
thought that the situation might be helped by putting some weights and
rope at the back to create a live
tension system. This will resolve the problem of jerking the warp whenever it
is advanced. The photo on the right shows what I have done. I played around with the weight and settled on one 10lb weight (plus the weight of the bar). The warp tension is now set at a constant as determined by the weights.
There might be a slight improvement - it is hard to tell. I shall press on and see what it looks like after washing. If there are still problems I shall dye the scarf black and move on!
On this page (http://gangewifre.blogspot.com.au/2011/09/lace-shawl.html) I describe how I put similar system on my AVL WSD loom and here (http://www.avlusa.com/files/4413/1558/5586/autowarp.jpg ) is a picture from the AVL website showing the general principal.
