Another Raddling Tip

I discovered quite accidentally another way to make the raddling process easier. I had put the ends of the bouts in clear plastic baggies. The purpose is to keep the warps clean and the bouts separated. However, in the past I had discovered that they tended to slip out of the baggies and get messed about anyway. This time I used potato chip clips to hold them. When I put the bouts over the top of the loom, I let out enough of the warp from their baggies so they would almost rest on the loom bench, but not quite. I.e., the bouts were weighted by the potato chip clips.


Here the bouts are actually resting on the bench at the front of the loom because I have done with the raddling and am ready to move on to winding the warp onto the back beam. While I was laying the warp ends into the raddle at the back of the loom, however, they were suspended over the front beam but above the bench, with those red potato chip clips serving as weights. Those weights gave the warp just enough tension to make separating the ends with my ever faithful crochet hook much easier.

Once I am ready to start winding the warp on, however, I will add much heavier weights to the bouts. From my experience, it seems that the warps should be wound on with at least as much tension as I will use when I am actually weaving.