Pitmen and Brakes

Pitmen

Leslie Johnson of Riverside Loomworks tells me those "Linkages" are called Pitmen. They are in the right place, attached to the Walking Beam (another new name!), and they are supposed to be tightened down hard. But when I tighten mine the loom becomes so stiff I can hardly use it, so I loosened them slightly for now. She and Annie both tell me that my bracket "A" and rack "B" cast iron parts may be worn and need checking. I will post a pic of those once I have some light. They don't look worn to me at all. But I have begun to suspect the rack may be worn, or may be a poor casting, because if I pad it up with a bit of cardboard things seem to work better.

However, I'm still not sure anything at all is wrong with the loom itself-there is a lot of room for user error at this point.

Right now the loom is working very well, as long as I bang the beater back pretty hard, which is what it takes to get the shuttle to fly across. Other loom owners tell me this is pretty typical of these looms. Annie says this can be controlled somewhat with more adjustment. I will have to get better pics of those cast iron parts to see what everyone says.

When you throw the beater back hard, the walking beam comes down on the trigger stick (installed correctly now) so that it will push the stirrup down quickly to throw the shuttle. I just think there isn't a lot of space in the design, so shaft 1 and the beater want to be in the same place sometimes. We'll see if this causes problems down the road. Leslie tells me later versions of the loom used metal for the sides of the shaft frames, and perhaps this is why.

Brakes

Here for your enjoyment are a couple of pics of the front & back brakes. First an overall view of the cloth beam brake system. The cloth beam has a ratchet wheel brake with a spring-controlled pawl, and a lever which rides a little wheel attached to the sword of the lay (upright post of the beater) as it moves, and automatically advances the cloth with another pawl which can be disengaged when necessary. The pic also shows the crank wheel that controls the warp beam brake tension:

And here is the warp beam brake, from behind & below. You can see the long rod of the tension adjustment crank, its threaded end goes through holes in each of 2 iron pieces attached to either end of a steel strap that goes around the brake wheel, and then into a threaded hole in an iron block attached to the wood of the upright. A nut goes on the end of the rod where it leaves the block, to keep you from accidentally unthreading the whole thing when you're trying to adjust the tension. The long rod has a spring affixed to it near the end, so that when its in position the spring presses against the first iron piece it goes through, pinching that against its mate at the other end of the strap. This increases the tension in fine increments: