Moving Maryam

You may recall that I bought a second TC-2 jacquard loom about a month ago. But I couldn’t arrange for shipping for another month, so Monique (the previous owner) generously agreed to store her for me until I could have her shipped.

Well, last weekend, I flew out to Albuquerque to get her ready for shipping! Here’s the saga of disassembling and shipping her.

I started by flying out to Albuquerque, where Monique picked me up at the airport. We went to Monique’s place first, to drop off my luggage and take a look at Maryam – and there she was, pretty one!

I made the final payment for her, and we went to pick up the U-Haul. Whoops! The 15-foot truck I had reserved was too big to go down the twisty driveway, and the 10-foot truck didn’t have a ramp. We’d have to lift the 250-pound sides up into the truck through raw muscle power.

Now, I’m strong, but I’m not that strong…and we didn’t have enough strong people coming to help, either. Monique made some emergency phone calls.

I drove the truck back to Monique’s place, and spent about half an hour trying (not very competently) trying to get it into position. Fortunately, just as I was about to back it into Monique’s pine tree, her friends Ray and Dana showed up and shouted “THE TREE! THE TREE!!!”

Ray, who is every bit as deft with a truck as I am awkward, quickly took the wheel and got it into place instantly. (Thank goodness.) We started disassembly.

Here’s what she looked like after about half an hour:

We’d removed the warp beam and the back beam, and set them carefully aside. We’d also detached the vacuum hose, the green snake visible to the left side of the loom.

Next to come out were the heddles in the center of the loom. I didn’t get a photo of them while they were in the loom, but here’s a photo of a packed-up set of heddles:

You can see them in the previous photo in the center of the loom.

These were tricky to pack since the springs at the bottom can tangle, which creates problems later (ask me how I know!). So we covered them in paper, wrapped them in cardboard boxes, and shipped them flat.

Next step was to remove the bars connecting the sides together. This required removing the panel covers on both sides, revealing the guts of the loom. Here’s the right side, which contains the fancy electronics as well as the servo motors for the beams:

And here’s the left side, which is considerably simpler:

That was as far as we got on Saturday, with four people working for three hours.

It was now obvious that four people working for several hours on Sunday to finish disassembly, plus trying to lift the 250-pound sides into the loom, were going to be pitifully inadequate to the task. Fortunately, Monique had now gotten some return phone calls – help was going to arrive tomorrow! Excellent.

As we neared finishing-time for the day, my friend Blossom arrived. Blossom and I go back over a decade – he’s a former professional weaver who retired due to a shoulder injury, then started a letterpress business, and who currently works painting sets for movie studios. He has an intensity that makes him fascinating – whatever he does, he pours himself into with passion and verve. He was working a string of forty 12-hour days in a row but somehow managed to wangle a half-day on Sunday so he could help me move Maryam (thanks, Blossom!!).

Anyway, he arrived just as we were finishing up for the day, and instantly dived in to help. I immediately noticed his matching Leatherman Tread! (You may recall my rhapsodizing over the one I got as a gift from my in-laws.)

We couldn’t resist a Wonder Twins photo:

Sunday morning, Monique and I got started around 10, packing up the small parts. Around 1pm, the cavalry arrived – eight people!! They got down to serious business, disconnecting wires and removing nuts and bolts. (Yes, I took lots of pictures and taped fasteners to the correct locations.)

Eventually, after removing about 16 bazillion bolts from solid steel plates (these Norwegian engineers do not mess around!), we successfully removed the left side:

Several hefty guys lifted it into the loom (no mean feat – it weighed about 250 pounds!), where it got wrapped in moving blankets and tied down with heavy ratchet straps. The ratchet straps were rated for 750 pounds each, and I had 12 of them – I was not messing around. (This also explains why my little rollerboard suitcase weighed 46 pounds when I checked it! Needless to say, when I opened it in Albuquerque, a “We inspected your luggage” love note from the TSA fell out. 😉 )

There was more to pack, of course. Quite a bit more. It didn’t fill the U-Haul by any means, but it was a bit of a puzzle to figure out how to pack the load so nothing would shift:

After three hours of work with eight people, we got Maryam fully disassembled, packed, and loaded. Here’s a picture of Monique, me, and Maryam:

I dropped the U-Haul off at Anne’s house (Anne was driving Maryam back to California for me) and flew back to California.

On Friday, I heard a horn beeping in front of my house. And there she was!

“Good Lord,” said my friend Lieven, “I’ve never seen this much room in your garage before!”

“Don’t worry,” I grinned. “We’re about to fix that.”

And here’s Maryam in her new home:

The assembly party is this Sunday! Four people are coming over to help put her together, led by my genius-engineer friend Dave. There will be cake, champagne, and lots of pictures, of course!!