Jack Loom Characteristics
A weaving instructor I met a few years ago said in relation to jack looms: In the 70's we had jack fever. I remember those years. Weaving had become very popular, and new weaving shops opened up everywhere. They wanted to sell inexpensive looms, and many new loom makers went into business making table looms and small jack looms. When they wanted to make larger looms, they simply made their looms wider. Beginners liked the idea of the lower price and smaller size. Many of these looms were very small and not very deep, making weaving on them sometimes difficult and producing fabrics with poor selvages and an uneven beat. Now jack looms can be purchased with large frames, many shafts and a variety of features.Jack looms are good for taking to workshops, designing and experimenting. They work very well if you are weaving narrow warps, short warps, four shaft plain weaves, balanced weaves, open setts and smooth warps.
"...They are best for experimenting demonstrations, teaching, designing." S.A. Zielinski vol. 2, p.15
But when you ask a jack loom to weave a combination of more difficult weaving tasks such as a close sett the full width of your loom, or a tight weave with a sticky warp, or an unbalanced weave on more than four shafts, you will encounter varying degrees of difficulty with your loom.
"Tying up a jack loom is very quick and easy." Deborah Chandler p.26
"Single tie-up (jack-type) are easy to set up and adjust, but hard to operate." S.A. Zielinski vol. 2, p.15
There are some things you can do to adjust your jack loom and make it work better, but you also need to learn what kind of weaving you should avoid. To do this you need to understand how a jack loom works.
Copyright 1998, Joanne Hall, Elkhorn Mountains Weaving Studio. (jah@montana.com) Used by permission of the author. Citation sources.
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