This first little beauty is a box tape loom. I purchased it new, but it was made to replicate ones that would have been made in the 1800's. These were common in households to make narrow bands of woven fiber. If you ever needed something to tie up a bag or use as a strap you would simply go over to the box loom and cut off what you needed.
The body of the box is made from green popular, with maple trim. And the reed, is made from canary wood.
It is a very simple loom to set up, and you can weave when you have time, and then either wind the finished tape on the dowel behind the reed, or let it gather in a basket on the floor. I think it is going to be a fun little loom to have up at work this summer. I think I might even let guests try it out.
The maker of this loom put these cute inlaid hearts into the loom as well. This heart lets me know that this is the back of the reed.
And since it's going with me to work I needed to make sure that it had my mark on it as well.
New toy number 2. I thought having a small table loom that would be easy to carry around and do demonstrations on would be a good thing to have. So I went on Ebay and found this little beauty. This one is not a replica, but I'm not sure how old it is. When I did some research on similar looms I found that these were made as children's looms to learn how to weave. The size is 12" high, 15 1/2" wide, and 14 1/2" long.
The wood was very dirty and needed to be cleaned and oiled, so that was the first step in the restoration. The string heddles were also in very bad shape, so I threw those away and made new ones. In the above picture you can see that it is missing the dowel to tie your warp to. That also was an easy cheap fix. The reed however was in very good shape. No rust at all. Many of the other little loom like this one had very rusty reeds, and the wood on them looked like cheap balsa wood.
Here is my new loom all clean, oiled, with parts replaced, and all warped up.
I also did some light sanding with a fine sand paper and steel wool. The wood is now smooth so as not to snag the fibers, and it works as good as it looks.
I already have two demonstrations to do this week, so I'm happy that I bought these looms.
The wood was very dirty and needed to be cleaned and oiled, so that was the first step in the restoration. The string heddles were also in very bad shape, so I threw those away and made new ones. In the above picture you can see that it is missing the dowel to tie your warp to. That also was an easy cheap fix. The reed however was in very good shape. No rust at all. Many of the other little loom like this one had very rusty reeds, and the wood on them looked like cheap balsa wood.
Here is my new loom all clean, oiled, with parts replaced, and all warped up.
I also did some light sanding with a fine sand paper and steel wool. The wood is now smooth so as not to snag the fibers, and it works as good as it looks.
I already have two demonstrations to do this week, so I'm happy that I bought these looms.
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