Spring Loom shed not open to shuttle race

[Carol]

I purchased a Spring a couple of years ago and it worked wonderfully for my first project. Then I moved and had to put the loom into storage for almost 2 years. I’m  finally back weaving and have the loom dressed but am having trouble getting a good shed. The bottom threads are not down on the shuttle race, they sit about 1/2″ above it, causing skips. I have removed the lease sticks and the warp is horizontal when the shafts are in neutral. The screws on the treadles are also horizontal and the cords to the lams are all the same (i.e. none are loose). I have tied up all 8 treadles to all 8 shafts and have double checked that no treadle is tied up to both the upper and lower lams on the same shaft.

Treadle #1 is tied up with short cords to the lower lams on shafts 1 -4 and long cords to the upper lams on shafts 5 – 8. Treadle #6 is tied up the opposite, short cords to lower lams on shafts 5 – 8 and long cords to the upper lams on shafts 1 – 4. Starting from neutral and pressing treadle #1, shafts 1 – 4 go up while shafts 5 – 8 go down, but not quite far enough for the lower threads to touch the shuttle race and it’s not a very big shed. When I release that treadle, shafts 1 – 4 drop back down but shafts 5 – 8 don’t move at all. All of the treadles are left in “up” such that the cords are all very loose and subsequently move around on the lams (they don’t stay in the grooves).

When I then press treadle #6, shafts 5 – 8 go up while shafts 1 – 4 go down, but again not enough to get a proper shed. And again, when that treadle is release, the raised shafts drop back down but the lowered ones don’t move at all and the treadles are all left in their highest position with lots of slack on all of the cords.

This didn’t happen before the loom was moved so I’m not sure if it has something to do with the move or the tie-up? I can’t see anything else obviously wrong, all of the cords on the pulleys etc. seem to be correct. I’ve double checked all of the tie-ups and they look right to me. Pressing each treadle produces movement in the shafts, nothing seems to be blocks, but the shed is just not as wide as it should be and the lower threads never touch the shuttle race.

Anyone have any suggestions??? Thanks!

[Sandra]

Carol, if you’ve checked your loom to see if there is anything hooked or caught on your harnesses or lams, maybe the section on Spring looms in the Knowledge Base might have some information that will help.

[Carol]

Unfortunately I couldn’t find anything in the Knowledge Base on Spring looms that helped. And nothing that I could see caught on anything. The lams all seemed to be the appropriate distance off the floor so I didn’t want to adjust them (and the warp goes through horizontally at neutral.

What I did find though, was that raising the beater helped quite a lot. I may have screwed in the adjustment nuts on the bottom of the beater prior to the move, but it was so long ago I can’t remember. Seems likely though, I probably didn’t want them to fall out. Anyway, letting them out a bit to raise the beater brought the warp down onto the shuttle race where it should be with an open shed. And I’ve been able to start weaving – seems to be working fine.

One other question  though, the tie-up cords seem to be quite loose because the treadles/lams don’t fall back down very far automatically, they only go down when an appropriate treadle is pressed. It doesn’t seem to make any difference to the weaving so far, but it does look pretty messy under there! Is that normal?

Carol.

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