Twill streaks

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.