Renovation
Now I had a jacquardloom and a punched card machine. It was the middle of July, parts of it were in the garden, others in the carport. Everything was very dirty and had a mouldy smell. We cleaned all wooden parts with humid cloth, and with denatured burner alcohol until no dirt came off any longer. The wooden parts that were accessible to sanding were sanded, either manually or with a hand-held sander. Almost all bad smell was removed. The jacquard machine was vacuum cleaned. Luckily the punched card machine was not that bad, it was enough to clean it thoroughly.
The metal parts were red with rust. We sanded or brushed with a steel brush and spray painted afterwards. A special challenge were the lingoes, which are the weights attached to each heddle. I estimated their number to about 2400, and they were completely covered in a thick rust layer. To start with, I used a sanding machine on a bunch of them at a time outdoors, and then removed the rest of the rust by sanding each one individually, before cleaning and oiling. Then Hermann Wendlinger told me he had heard that a citric acid solution would help, so I tried it and behold, the citric acid removed most of the rust. Each lingoe had still to be sanded, cleaned and oiled afterwards individually, though. I decided to remove rust from 1616 lingoes and even with the help of the citric acid solution, it was a never-ending task.
It was September, eight hooks were missing, but were found in a box. What we did not find were the neck-cords, that are attached to the hooks. There was similar cord to be found in any of the DIY shops we visited. I phoned Manufaktur Arm and they had some left. However, it turned out that they were too short. Then I contacted the company who used to make the cord, but they did not produce this type anymore. After lots of searching, my husband walked into a fishery supply store in Norway and found stiff one mm twine for repairing fishing nets.
Then we discovered that a Jacquard needle was gone. This was worse, I tried asking around and got sent from place to place. Nobody thought they would have the right steel or the right tools or time. In November my husband took onthe challenge of making a new needle. He found thin steel and bended the piece, the stopping plate had to be wielded on using copper and gas.
The harness cords looked frayed and old, and I decided to make new ones for the whole loom. Hermann gave me the name of a supplier and I received a box of bright yellow thread. I was lucky, it really looked great on the loom.
In Jacquard weaving the density of a fabric is determined not only by the reed, but also by the comber boards. I had therefore to start deciding which densities I would use. They did not correspond with the comber boards on the loom and I had to get new ones. Again, Hermann saved me. He drew the comber boards with his CNC program and sent the drawings to a small company, which made them for me. Immediately after I got the new boards, the next problem surfaced: The new comber boards did not fit into the existing frame. I needed a new frame and in the middle of the lockdown, this was impossible. Now it was December and I gave up. I decided to just continue and attache the new comber boards on top of the old frame. I made 1600 new harness cords and threaded them through the comber boards, attached on top of the old frame. I set up four repetitions of the pattern, with 400 hooks this is 1600 plus 8 for the selvage. One hook, four harness cords, four holes to thread. After this it I attached a heddle with a lingoe to every harness thread, which took quite a while as well, trying to get all heddle eyes in a line.
In January, my husband decided to make a new frame from parts of an old loom lying around in our garage in Norway. In February, we managed to transport the frame in a ski bag to its new home in Switzerland and to attach it to the loom. I made a test warp, threaded the heddles and the reed.
And now the big question is, if the loom will work…
