Please welcome Emmy!

Yesterday was New Year’s, and I celebrated with a loom-raising party! Four friends came over and helped put Emmy (my new 40-shaft loom) together.

We started with a pile of bits in the garage:

Then we moved them out to the driveway:

What pieces to start with? My friends Lieven and Dave went through the manual, but it started with the assumption that the side frames were already built. Undeterred, they sorted through the bits and pieces and eventually figured out how to reassemble the side frames:

Around then, Alfred and Nyondo arrived. And not a moment too soon, as putting together the full frame was a lot simpler with five people:

Then we put in one of the warp separator beams, and the lamms:

The Compudobby unit was tricky – heavy, delicate, and awkward. (Not to mention expensive!) Here we are putting it in…there are three people in the photo, but it eventually took four of us to get it properly seated and attached:

But we did get it in:

The next task was to hang the shafts. Nyondo untangled them one by one, and Alfred and Dave hung them one by one. I ferried the shafts from one place to another.

Here we are at the beginning:

…and at the end, with all forty shafts hung neatly inside the frame:

Nyondo volunteered for the tedious work of hooking the shafts to the lamms underneath:

Dave and Alfred then went through and carefully aligned all the dobby cables and made sure they were running over the right pulleys – exacting and tedious work.

We had all been working for nearly six hours at this point, and were getting more than a little punchy. So we finished up work for the day by putting in the warp beams:

And I couldn’t resist a victory photo:

There was still some work left to do, though, like installing the beater, the bench, and the warp tensioning devices. I got up early this morning to finish the job. Voila Emmy!

I did make one mistake in assembly, though: the warp tensioning systems got installed on the wrong side. I’ll fix that tomorrow morning – I’m way too exhausted tonight!

Many, many thanks to my friends Lieven, Dave, Alfred, and Nyondo – without them, Emmy would still be a pile of parts.

Please welcome Emmy!