Inkle Loom Upgrade

About a year or so ago I made an inkle loom from PVC pipe. The pattern came from Handwoven magazine, if you look through the blog history you will find a posting of it.

I made the loom to the specifications of the magazine article. It works just as is, but I wasn’t happy with how the warp lade over the castle bar, both heddle and open warp strands.

So to fix my little problem I decided to create a second  shorter castle, so the loom now has a double castle. What this does is it creates a cross of warp strands, which helps with the tension. This also gives the open warp threads the ability to move more freely.

The way you warp the loom now is starting from the fabric beam over the first castle bar, under the second castle bar, around the back beam to the front beam, under the first castle bar, over the second castle bar, to the back beam, then to the front bar and you continue this way until you are done warping.

The one disadvantage is you need to remove the vertical side pieces of the castle so you are able to do the cross. The rest of the setup is the same and the weaving is the same. This little experiment worked out very well for me and hopefully or may be help someone else.