A Little Loom Repair
Floor looms are pretty tough pieces of equipment. Discounting the occational tree crashing through your roof or putting your loom out in the weather, they generally withstand years and years of use with almost no repairs needed. A metal heddle can get bent as you are threading the warp or the treadle tie-up may get dislodged or fray and break but generally not much more than that. A regular dusting and some oil on the moving parts is pretty much it.
Late Saturday afternoon I was happily weaving on my Louet computer controlled loom when there was a snap and the treadle came loose from the controls. The harnesses fell into their lower position and all weaving stopped. I looked for the problem and found two shredded halves of a Texsolv line. Well, rats. I pulled out the instructions I used to build the loom and the box of extras which includes my small but important stash of Texsolv line. I verified what I thought needed to happen. Then I walked away. It was too late in the day for the careful work required to get the loom functioning again.
Sunday morning, when I opened the shop, I went to work. It only took me a few minutes to verify what needed to go where, pull off the broken pieces of Texsolv, measure the new piece of line and get everything put back together.
Texsolv is made by the Texsolv AB Company of Dalsland, Sweden. The name comes from "tex" for textiles and "solv" which is the Swedish word for heddle. There are two different Texsolv lines on my loom. The first is the continuous double-strand of fine, crocheted, heat-treated, white polyester cord that makes the heddles.
The second is a similarly heat-treated, white polyester cord that has loops or button holes every 1/2" which is used to attach pretty much everything to the loom that needs to be flexible and adjustable and isn't screwed together. This cording attaches the apron rods to the cloth beam, the metal warp rods to the warp beam, the harnesses to the harness frame, the treadle to the electronic interface and the floating breast beam to the loom. You get the idea. Without it all sorts of things would fall off onto the floor.
Texsolv is strong. It can fray but it generally doesn't just break. Remember it's heat-treated polyester so it should last forever. I have looked at where my line frayed and broke and the only thing sharp enough to do any damage is the screw head it's attached to. I'll check on it in the future to see how it's doing. In the mean time, it's back to weaving!