Posted by Susan on Tuesday, 30 September 2008, at 8:05 a.m.:
In Reply to: Need help with Counterbalance loom posted by Mary on Monday, 29 September 2008, at 11:41 a.m.:
Sounds like your looms is working just right. Each harness is counterbalanced by another, so when one goes up, it's mate goes down, lifting up all the threads you need the weft to go under, and pulling down all the threads you need to go over.
You have tied it to a "skeleton tie-up" one treadle per harness, which means when you want to lower a pair of harnesses, say 1 & 3, you need to use two feet, on treadle 2 and 4. But you could do a multiple tie up - two or more treadles to each lamm (harness)so you need to use only one foot to lower two harnesses. Which is why you have the extra treadles. You tie two (maybe the outside two) for plain weave, harness one and three vs. two and four, and then the center 4 treadles are available for a twill - 1&2, 2&3, 3&4, and 4&1). Your plaine weave treadles are called "A" & "B", the center "pattern" treadles are called "1", "2", "3" and "4".
The only shortcoming of a counterbalanced loom is the difficulty you sometimes see when you want to lower one of the three harnesses. Sometimes you don't get a clear shed because the counterbalancing harness is tied into the selected harness.