The beam I'm weaving was warped with 187 yards of mostly 8/2 cotton about 20 EPI. The twill sections require a tighter sett and looser tension. In beaming them, something fishy happened with the tension in one of the sections. As I wove, threads would go slack to the tune of one inch every yard. After trying to weight the threads individually, I finally noticed that the problem was really with the whole section and devised a way to work around it.
I grab the whole section using a cheap carabiner intended to be used as a keychain. It's smooth and able to be easily snapped over all of the offending threads and onto the rug wool I'm using for my weight. My original plan was to orient it with the flat side holding the threads parallel, but I couldn't figure out a way to do that.
The rug wool then passes over a hook that I've screwed into my DIY storage shelf above the loom...
...and down to a 1.25 pound weight from an arm-training set. These weights come in handy!
[In this photo, you'll notice another little trick. When I lose a thread in the warp, I put a cone of matching thread onto the rod and feed it over the beam, joining the rest of the threads in the web. There's enough friction from passing over the beam that the tension is just fine with no other weights. Unlike film canisters which need to be moved every yard or so, this system lets me just keep weaving until the lost thread reappears. If it has been many yards and there's a noticeable buildup of the lost thread left on the beam, I'll unwind some of it. Otherwise, it'll just be waiting there on the beam when I finish weaving.]
At every "cut line" in my weaving, about 10 yards, I gather up the slack that has been held by the weight system and pull it all the way to the fell line. There, it's tied tightly to be cut off later.
Notice the rug wool again. This time it marks the cut line between two sets of garments. This is a perfect place to create a gap in the weaving because it can just be cut off when the garments are made.
And here's how it looks after weaving a couple of inches. Notice that it's only 3-4 picks that are compromised. Of course, I won't cut the cloth until it reaches the cloth take-up beam at the back of the loom.
So there you have it. A deep, dark secret from the production world: beams aren't always perfect. There are lots of little tricks that have to be invented and employed to make up for mistakes in another part of the setup.
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