Posted by Peg in South Carolina
The dummy warp is 10/2 pearl cotton so the spacing of the yarns looks pretty skimpy. When I get to the handspun, which is quite a bit fatter, the spaces will no longer look so skimpy.
The important thing this photo shows, however, is the reason why I don’t like to put on wide bouts. With two bouts, each bout is covering close to 14”. The result is that a very wide angle is created on the outside warps between the area where the bout is choke tied to the place it reaches on the raddle. Those outside ends cover more length than do the inside ends.
This difference in length from choke tie to raddle does not make for a good beamed warp. Ideally the warp ends should be travelling in as nearly a straight line as they can. Since this is such a short warp, I may just split each of the bouts in half after I have raddled the other group and before I beam it on.
I haven’t yet decided the size of the bouts for the hand spun. I was thinking 2” but 16 ends seems a bit absurd. I will probably try 4”. One nice thing about short warps is that you can get away with a slightly imperfectly beamed warp. With a long warp you can’t because what starts out as a practically invisible problem becomes greater and greater the longer you weave.
Related Posts:
Questions on Preparing Warp Bouts
Ready to Raddle
Raddling
Another Raddling Tip
"Raddling the Dummy Warp” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on February 12, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina
2 comments:
When I was teaching my students to warp from front to back, I generally encouraged them to aim for chains 4"-5" wide. That was wide enough to manage easily but not so wide that the difference between the centres and edges of the chains caused a problem.
If they did wind up (ha!) using wider chains, we made sure that they stood as far as possible from the loom while putting tension on the warp, since the extra distance also minimizes that angle.
One student got the message that wide chains were problematic, but took that info to the opposite extreme and wound a warp (at home) for placemats in 1" bouts (20 epi). That one was a real headache to wind onto the loom!
Yes, 4"-5" is probably good for a beginning weaver. They are probably working with threads that go from 10-20 epi. I am making the handspun bouts a bit wider, but not as wide as the dummy warp! So many beginners want to get all the warp they can onto the warping board, not realizing that they can get into if they go beyond the half-way point on the warping pegs. On the other hand, with 60/2 silk, where I could get lots on the pegs, I make bouts between 2" and 3". Bouts between 1" and 2" might be wiser but I et so tired of always tying off so many bouts...(grin!)
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