I've been winding the warp for the dresser scarf for my sister Carol. I am using a sectional beam, but having no spool rack nor an AVL Warping Wheel yet, I am winding 2" chains on a conventional warping board with pegs, and am winding six chains.
Each chain I am winding up, under tension, onto an empty toilet paper tube. Actually, each chain is wound onto two toilet paper tubes, one inside the other for extra collapse resistance. I've been using the toilet paper tube method for years. It works well enough, though optimally only with spun silk yarn, and not organzine, which is sufficiently slippery to require a way to hold the warp under consistent tension and as flatly as possible. This is the very reason that sectional warping will be my upcoming direction; it's not that sectional warping is faster (which it can be, by using enough spools on a spool rack), but that I will be perfectly able to keep slippery organzine warps under consistent tension, without the intermediary step of removing it from a warping board; even trying very hard to keep it under tension and winding onto a kite stick or tube involves a few steps during which, however brief, the tension on the warp must be relaxed.
This doesn't always create problems, but it often does, and it's better to be able to keep slippery warps under tension at all times since doing this means that the warp has no time to slacken and tangle. Any warp can tangle, but a fine organzine warp is the worst (second only to the amazing tanglitude of an untensed skein of tram). Silk is very precious and I am always looking for ways to avoid waste!
The good thing is that it's not hard for me to make a tension box if it turns out that I need one.
In any case, after Tien taught me how to use the Warping Wheel, I'm now pretty comfortable with the way it works, and trust it as a device that can help me keep silk under tension while putting it onto the warp beam of the loom. Probably nothing is quite so excellent for very fine silks as a spool rack and enough spools (and of course, a tension box in that case) but at this point I'm not planning to wind very long warps yet (as production increases, then I would do that, but it's pointless while doing only sample warps or small warps).
For the spun 2-ply silk I'm using for my sister's dresser scarf, luckily, I can just warp it in the conventional way on the warping board, and then wind it onto the sectional warp beam in 2-inch sections. I developed a kind of bastardized way of placing lease sticks below the raddle, and suspending them firmly with weights attached, which keeps them separated. The weighted lease sticks, while winding the warp onto the warp beam, function as a sort of improvised tension box and does a lot in the way of evening warp tension while winding.
Hi Alfred,
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't have to be an AVL tension box, and I have at least three tension boxes obtained at garage sales etc. You're welcome to one of my extras.
With the Warping Wheel (and sectional warping generally) you can use masking tape to hold the threads in more-or-less the right sequence. For fine threads, I prefer having a cross, though. You can buy the cross-maker from AVL, or you can make your own quite cheaply. You're welcome to come down and look at mine.