Day 62: It has taken an inordinate amount of trial and error and a healthy helping of my father's tractor-starting vocabulary to work around the design flaws in this particular model of tape loom. Primarily, I was struggling with warp tension because the brake can only be engaged in one position. One hand must be free to release and re-engage it while another hand holds the wound warp tight to the roller so it doesn't unwind. A third non-existent hand seemed to be necessary to hold tension on the warp, and a fourth appeared to be needed to turn the crank. Since I am not an octopus, this was challenging. To make matters even more difficult, the warp beam is round and smooth. It has no gripping capability whatsoever. Once tied on, the knotted warp simply wouldn't wind, so I taped the loose ends to the roller. I found that if I "pre-curled" the separator papers, I could wind on by turning the roller with my fingers, bypassing the need for the brake entirely. It's still not the easiest thing to warp with even tension, but as you can see, I managed to make a nice little 1/4" tape (11 threads of 8/2 cotton) from some of my thrums. Before there was scotch tape, packaging tape, masking tape, etc., this is what "tape" meant. And like today's sticky tapes, it was used to hold things together. The average household used a lot of tape, and this was how it was made.
Footnote: I just discovered that those bag clips don't snap down very firmly. I was able to put on a new warp using the clip as a tensioner, freeing up both hands for the winding-on process!
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