Mysterious Dobby

I had a bit of a breakthrough with the AVL dobby last night.  Although I've used one before, on Rosemary's borrowed Schacht Baby Wolf 8-harness mechanical dobby, I didn't have to assemble that one, so it remained an interesting, clicky-sounding box with some rolling parts.  Last night I sat and really took a moment to study the dobby, looking inside, moving parts around, and reading the careful prose of the assembly manual. 

So what I didn't understand was that the mechanism for actually lifting the harnesses is the dobby bar - it moves for each shed.  And the compu-dobby, or the pins of the bars on the rotating mechanical dobby, push in the little dobby keys inside the box (where there is a pin, it pushes it in; where there is not, it leaves the pin unpushed = simple binary code) and then the treadle is depressed to pull down the dobby arm and raise the selected harnesses, the unselected harnesses remaining in a down position. 

So really, that was the big learning thing.  The next is to understand the assembly of the mechanical dobby on the side of the dobby box - the rocking cog, etc., and how it attaches to the loom. 

There are some metal bars missing from the dobby keys where the dobby pins strike them.  It looks as though it was used without them for some time, as it reveals marks, but I could probably service the dobby and affix replacement metal shields on the dobby keys as needed.

Saturday, or day after tomorrow, I'd really like to begin assembly of the AVL.  To do this I shall have to disassemble Granny Cranny, and stash her; then I'll clean the floor and surrounding area.  It might not be possible to attach the fly shuttle boxes right now, on account of not enough width in that part of the garage (without the fly shuttle boxes it will just leave about 12" of clearance along the left-hand side of the loom, the passageway.  Since the Bluster Bay shuttle is due to arrive, I suspect I could do just fine with that for now, though the fly shuttle is very intriguing.  And probably quite loud and vigorous when in use!!

Wondering also what to do with Blossom's previously-wound blue cotton warp that's on the large beam.  Since it's a double warp beam loom, one sectional one straight, I might for now just leave Blossom's warp on the sectional beam as it is, and warp Noemi's scarf on the straight warp beam.  In any case I don't have the AVL Warping Wheel yet, nor a spool rack, though I've recently learned that sectional warps can be wound on a warping board, in bouts of 2" at a time.  That would take of course as long as winding any regular warp, but would fit on the sectional beam.  Gotta get that Warping Wheel.