TENSION BOX: ANOTHER GOOD USE

Posted by Peg in South Carolina

I discovered that the tension box is useful not only for winding cones, but also for making skeins.  Making skeins for dyeing the weft yarns is what I have now started to do.

The yarn comes up from the rack in the lower right hand corner.  It is emerging through the metal eye there.  It then travels up to the tension box which I have set up on a snack table.  It goes through the metal eye and then around the pegs.  From there it goes to the yarn counter, which is sitting on the red book.   The black box is the counter.  The yarn is wound 3 times around the wheel of the counter so that there is enough grip for the counter to be accurate.  There is a metal eyelet it goes through first.  Then on the other side of the counter is another metal eye.  It goes through that and then over to the skein winder on the upper right.

What the tension box does here is to keep the yarn from looping and flapping around before it enters the yarn counter.  When the yarn loops around too badly, it will slip off the wheel of the counter and gets caught in the gear mechanism at the back.  When it happened this last time,  I had to cut the yarn and join a new end to it.  That is when I thought of the tension box………..

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Skeining Photos

"Tension Box: Another Good Use” was written by Margaret Carpenter for Talking about Weaving and was originally posted on November 5, 2009. ©2009 Margaret Carpenter aka Peg in South Carolina.