When I invite guests into my home for the first time, they often spot my Grandmother’s loom quickly. It would be difficult not to. It’s a 56’ wide Macomber Floor Loom and most people have never seen anything like it in person. Looms used to be one of the most commonplace items a family could own but as textile production moved to factories people became less familiar with how cloth is made. Industrial looms are much more complex than mine but it’s amazing what I can make with it! I have labeled this post Part 1 because there is a rich language surrounding weaving. For our introduction, I’ll discuss the basic parts of a Jack Type Floor Loom like my Macomber as well as the terms for the threads that, when woven, become textiles of all kinds.
Warp: Threads held under tension that run vertically or front to back. These are lifted and sometimes lowered on floor looms to allow the weaver to pass the weft through more quickly.
Weft: Threads that travel under and over warp threads to create the weave structure and pattern. On a Frame Loom and some Tapestry Looms, this is done one warp thread at a time!
Loom - Originally this word meant any tool but has come to refer specifically to the device a weaver uses to hold warp threads under tension. Simple looms like Frame Looms do only this. Floor looms are more complex and have mechanisms that allow the weaver to easily lift numerous combinations of warp threads which create various weave structures and patterns. They also allow the weaver to wind on large amounts of warp for longer or multiple items.
Reed: A long, slim, piece of metal or wood with slots called “dents” which holds the warp threads in order and at a particular number per inch. Reeds come in various standard sizes to make it easier for the weaver to arrange their warp threads at the density they use most often. There are useful conversion charts for changing warp density without changing the reed. Reeds tend to be expensive but threading more than one warp thread in a dent is fiddly and getting them in the correct order through the heddles afterward has to be done extremely carefully. The time and energy required might outweigh the cost of a reed with different numbers of dents per inch if the weaver uses a particular Sett often enough.
Beater: This piece of a floor loom serves two purposes in weaving. It houses the reed and is used to “beat” or push down the warp threads. In rug weaving, the beater is aptly named as rugs require the weft threads to be very firmly pushed against one another to make a strong fabric that can withstand being walked on. Other textiles require a lighter touch, more of a tap. Getting the “beat” right for a given fabric is a point of practice for a weaver and a mark of skill. It will affect how the fabric drapes and it’s structural integrity as well as how the intended pattern looks. If a weaver desires a Twill structure in a Bird’s Eye pattern, the consistency and pressure applied when beating will contribute to whether the pattern looks squashed or stretched or just right and if it looks the same throughout the fabric. We will look at Structure vs Pattern in Part 2.
Shaft/Harness: Shafts, also called Harnesses are used to separate warp threads in different combinations for the weft to travel through, creating various weave structures and patterns. They can be made of metal or wood and look like big hanging frames. On Jack Type Floor Looms, the harnesses only lift warp threads but on other types of floor looms they lift and depress them at the same time. There are benefits to the capabilities of the other types and if I ever acquire one, I’ll write all about it. I have never yet met a textile I couldn’t make using my Macomber loom though.
Heddles: These can be made of metal or string or plastic. They attach to the top and bottom of the Shaft frame and have a hole in the middle for a warp thread to pass through after it has gone through the reed. Most of the time, only one thread is pulled through one heddle. This is how the harnesses are able to lift the warp threads. If this is beginning to sound impossibly slow and tedious, you are beginning to understand some of the reason we don’t make all of our textiles this way anymore.
Breast Beam: The horizontal narrow piece of wood the woven cloth travels over on its way to being wound on the cloth beam. This beam and the Back Beam are the structures that make a frame support for the warp to be held under tension against.
Back Beam: The horizontal narrow piece of wood the warp travels over as it is wound onto the Warp Beam
Cloth Beam: A cylindrical piece of wood the woven textile is wound onto when the weaver advances the warp.
Warp Beam: A cylindrical piece of wood the warp is wound onto when the weaver is dressing the loom which holds the threads in order and under tension as the weaver advances it a few inches at a time. My Macomber has a plain warp beam like the one I described but some have a Sectional Warp Beam which I will describe if I ever use one.
Cloth Apron: A piece of cloth, usually canvas attached to both beams that holds the thin apron rod which both ends of the warp are tied to.
Brake: My Macomber loom has a Ratchet Brake system with a brake cable which both attach to the warp beam and allow me to advance the warp from the front of the loom by depressing a metal lever with my foot.
Castle: This is the part of the frame that is perpendicular to the Beams and holds the shafts and the top levers that make up the Jacks which is how this type of loom got its name
Jack: The way a jack works on a Macomber is unique in that it pulls the shafts up instead of pushing them up. The jack on my loom sits above the shafts and when the weaver presses a peddle down, the lever pivots and pulls the shaft it is attached to up. Each shaft has a jack on both ends so that the shaft is lifted evenly.
Tie-Ups: These are the cords or metal hooks in my case that connect the pedals to the levers which control which shafts are pulled up when the pedals are depressed. They can be changed quite easily (by weaver standards) on a Jack Type loom which is one reason why this type of loom became so popular in the 1970’s. It is necessary to change which pedals are tied to which shafts if you want to make different kinds of weave structures and patterns. I fortunately haven’t had to get down on the floor and change mine in a long time because the weave structure and patterns I am most fascinated with use the same one.
So now you have a basic understanding of a Jack Type Floor Loom’s parts. Still a little confused? Me too. Even after 8 years. Did you see some terms that I didn’t explain? Keep an eye out for Part 2 of Exploring Weaving Terminology. We will look at some of the tools a weaver uses and get into the details of the textiles themselves!
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