Monday, March 30, 2009

Inkle Loom

As I was reading the latest issue of Handwoven one of the articles tells you how to make an inkle woven hat band. Pretty cool I thought, you know what’s even cooler. The article also tells you how to make an inkle loom. This loom is made out of PVC pipe. So the strength of a wooden loom may be missing. The only way to find out is to make one.

Since I don’t have an inkle loom I decided to do just that make one of these looms. Also since I do card weaving I was looking for a loom to use for that as well. I think I may have found it. So we shall see if this works out the way I’m hoping it will.

The first thing I did was cut all the pieces to length and marked them. Since you can take the loom apart for storage I wanted to mark all the pieces so I knew who went where when I put it back together.

Next I got the threaded rods step up with the nuts and washers to the correct places on the rod.

Then all I did was assemble the loom and it’s ready to go. The final thing for me to do is to warp the loom and try it out. I will be doing that later this week, or at least that is my goal.

This project cost me less then $20.00 for all the parts. I do remember reading on one of the Yahoo groups about a PVC warping board that was in a previous issue of Handwoven. There was some concern that it might not hold up to the high tension that it would receive. That may be true with this loom also, but since I don’t have an Inkle loom and I really can’t afford a pre made one. I figured I would try this out. Since the cost is minimal and it takes no time to make I don’t see the harm in experimenting with it.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

The loom will bow (bend) some under tension. Put a book on the back section if the loom is too light and bounces around while weaving. Be sure to set the loom on a towel or other suface proctor if you wish to keep the nice wood surface scratch-free.

Sharon Kersten

Chuck said...

Thank you Sharon for all you advise. I do appreiciate it.

Gina said...

I made a warping board out of pvc and it works great. I used super glue on the corner joints and not on the side ones because I wanted to be able to fold it flat because my space is limited but it works great!

Chuck said...

How very cool Gina. I was also thinking of making a warping boardout of PVC and still may do that if I do I will post it.

Anonymous said...

thanks for sharing.


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