Restoring a Vintage Weaving Loom

About 15 years ago, I bought a vintage floor weaving loom from a friend. The original owner of the loom assembled it years ago. And the loom had been unchanged since the friend had bought the loom. I don’t know how many years he had the loom. He was not a weaver so never used the loom. It sat unused in in his aircraft hangar for many years. I bought the loom from him for $300 and it sat in my garage for 5 years. When we moved to our current house about 11 years ago, my husband took the loom apart, packed it up and stored it in the garage.

Preparing the Loom for Assembly

At the start of 2024, I decided to take the loom apart, clean it, and get it in working order. I knew this would be a long process and hoped all of the wooden parts would be there. This loom has mainly wooden parts and seems to be around 60-70 years old. The loom is a rare overhead jack loom, with wooden jacks that sit on top of the weaving shafts. There was one part that was missing, and I replicated it in oak. Luckily, I found the missing part sandwiched between other parts when I unpacked the loom. The photo below shows the loom as I packed it for its journey across the country ten years ago.

We unpacked the loom with cargo straps after separating the lamms and foot treadles, took down the castle, and stacked up the weaving shafts. Here is a description and diagram of a floor loom. Then once I dusted the loom and scrubbed with a damp rag with water, it was time to reassemble it. Then it was time to clean the rust off of the reed. We soaked the reed in Evapo-Rust overnight. Then I dried off the reed, took a toothbrush with 3in1 oil and put a thin layer of oil all over the reed. Then I placed the reed back in the beater bar.

Assembling the Loom

Now it was time to assemble the rest of the loom. It took the two of us to get the castle uprights fitted into the loom since they were so tight. Notice the small wooden piece with black rubber on the top at the bottom of the upright. I replicated the piece before I discovered the original sandwiched between the weaving shafts.

I cleaned the dust off of the shafts. This loom is currently using metal heddles. They are somewhat rusty and I will eventually replace them with either new metal heddles or the newer Texsolv heddles.

The lamms are sitting above the foot treadles in the above image. Lamms separate the control of the shafts from the treadles and allow a treadle to control multiple shafts at the same time.

Once I completed running the cables from the from the jacks to the outer edges of the shafts, I then ran the cables from the inner parts of the jacks down to the lamms. Finally, I needed to connect the treadles to the lamms. I connected shafts 1 and 3 to the leftmost treadle and shafts 2 and four to the rightmost treadle for a plain weave pattern. The shafts are numbered from 1-4 starting from the front of the loom. The foot treadles are usually, but not always, numbered 1-6 starting on the left.

Completing the Loom

Once I connected everything, I threaded the heddles with the warp threads, then started weaving with a plain weave for about 6 feet and a width of about a foot. The loom worked like a champ and was very easy to use. The last owner that used the loom had the bench set for exactly my height, so it was very comfortable sitting there weaving.