Converting a Pre Wound Saori warp to dress Octado Loom

[Lisa]

My first weaving was on a Saori loom before purchasing an Octado.  I have a beautiful cashmere warp left over that is 200 ends by 6.5 yards that is prewound on a cardboard roll.  The beginning exposed ends are taped down.  There is corrugated material between the layers on the roll.  The Saori prewound warps are a plug & play (no crosses or chains).  How may I convert this to dress the Octado back to front?  I’m going to use your cashmere for the weft.  Thank you.

[Ginette]

Hi Lisa,

If you wind front to back, once you’ve sley the reed and thread heddles and have tied each thread onto the apron rod on the back beam, if someone can unroll the warp for you off the corrugated cardboard roll and hold tension to it, then you should be able to wind it on.

If you tried back to front, and because the saori warps are cut and taped in order, you could have your lease sticks in position, take one thread at a time and put it through the lease sticks and form a cross as you go and tie each to the apron rod.

Back to front, have to tell a story when a friend forgot to tie the cross before she took it off the warping board.   We positioned and secured the raddle between the harnesses and the back beam breast with clamps.  This helped create a ‘makeshift lease sticks/cross’.  Then we put the warp onto the apron rod and placed the threads onto the raddle the best we could.  Once all done (30 inches wide) we then wound the warp.  After all wound, we kept the raddle clamped in the same position so she could thread the heddles, taking them off the raddle in 1/2 inch bundles,  close enough in proximity of where they should had been.   It’s not the best cross but it sure helped in a pinch!

Hope this helps!

Ginette

 

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