New old loom for weaving tartan

[Pleater]

My father's family were hand loom weavers in the linen trade in the west riding of Yorkshire, but were blacklisted for agitating for a living wage. The daughters continued weaving, first on hand loom - presumably as there was one available, using cotton, and then in a factory.
I did not know that - though my father was a union man through and through, but it seems that there was something in the DNA.

The sons went into engineering, and I am quite good with anything mechanical, but I started off with knitting machines, I spin and I have a small loom - just a toy really, but it seem to feed a need - the stocking frame is actually a knitting machine, by the way.
If you seek out a song called 'Poverty poverty knock' the rhythm of the tune is supposed to imitate the clickerty clackerty of the flying shuttle looms. I am sure YouTube can supply several versions.

Skills such as dyeing and making yarn and fabrics are pretty archaic these days. I am a bit an anachronism in that I have many skills not at all usual these days - going right back to working flint, or at least, when I found I had left part of my kitchen equipment in the car and had set up my camp at an English civil war event I cracked off some useful sharp edges which enabled the slicing of meat and veges for dinner that day.

One of my exploits was involvement in making the biggest blanket in the world - the blankets were all 4ft by 6ft and sewn together, either knitted or crochet, so once we got the record they were all taken apart and distributed.
One of the Oxfam people told the story of a woman who's village was attacked and she fled naked into the bush with her two children and an Oxfam blanket. Next day she went back and found everything burnt, but there was a water container, a calabash, overlooked by the raiders - so she tied up the blanket so she could carry one child on her back and the other child and the calabash supported under her arms and walked for three days to find help. Without the blanket they would not have survived as she could not have carried children and water that distance without it.

Anne the Pleater

[NHhighlander]

...
but it seems that there was something in the DNA.
---
and an Oxfam blanket.
---

We respect and honor those who struggle/d, yet our hearts are even more with those who take the blows and keep on surviving, and with those that help the weak.

(thread is straying a bit, but that's real life. Thank you Anne! - been exploring the Flying8 design https://www.weberei-hamburg.com/en, and the mission the Moller are pursuing is amazing, talk about helping the weak help themselves!)

[NHhighlander]

I felt like sending a love-you note to all of Xmarks, as I am finally getting back

Thank yous, and also apologies.

I've learned so much in this process so far.
Not just Scot culture then and now, but about human nature, even my own, although my status as a human remains in dispute...

With the flying shuttle, I had hit a wall. Surprising to self, I had grown emotionally invested to that element. Which is no good obviously, but, when it comes to emotions, well... That led to a loss of happy. Now that it's "almost" solved, and other minor bottlenecks are getting cleared, I feel more confident in continuing.

A lot of the good progress in this project has come from y'all, and also some others in the /weaving Reddit. There are great people around us, cue-in "what a wonderful world."

However, it appears that I might have unwittingly offended some people along the way. While it would be obvious that was not the intention, still, I feel I owe at least an explicit clarification, as in, no such intention. I am loud and careless, and while that sounds as excuses, it is not, because I do believe I need to be more careful with that and other such and I certainly will be working at getting better.

As to advances with the project, yes, I'll report on those. Not with a big show of how clever I am, I will leave that to Peter Pan, but just because some others eventually might want to do a similar experiment, hopefully better than mine, in this quest to reconstruct a hypothetical 1770s Scottish loom in Nova Scotia, or something similar, and they may find what I did as useful, especially regarding what to avoid... (funny, as I keep and keep looking for sources and more information on that kind of loom, this thread is starting to show up...)

Thank you, again. See y'all soon, with some more useful steps on building this loom.

[Pleater]

Something which might be of a little interest, but no practical use for the lone weaver is that the loom shops of the 'little mesters' - the hand weavers of yore - might have six or eight looms in a building behind a row of cottages. The loom shop would have tall windows to let in the light and the looms would be arranged in pairs, back to back and would provide work for six or eight men and also their families.
By the time of the loom shops there would be factories producing the yarn and even preparing the warp in standard lengths to make a standard piece of cloth, usually called a string because there was a piece of cord used to measure each piece after it was taken off the loom.

The song 'poverty poverty knock' mentions weavers finding their wages 'short of a string' if the foreman decided that their work was not up to the required quality, or perhaps just trying to dock wages to increase profits.

When the power looms were got up to speed and factories were built to house them one woman could run four looms and each loom could work 3 or 4 times faster than a hand loom, even with a flying shuttle.

Anne the Pleater

[Steve Ashton]

I had not heard the term "Little Mester", so I looked it up.

This definition is found on wiki.
A little mester is a self-employed worker who rents space in a factory or works from their own workshop. They were involved in making cutlery or other smallish items such as edge tools (i.e. woodworking chisels). The term is used almost exclusively to describe the craftsmen of the Sheffield area, and is mostly archaic as this manner of manufacture peaked in the 19th century and has now virtually died out with the death of stan Shaw in 2012 who was referred to as the last little mester. Little mesters either worked alone or employed in small numbers of workers and/or apprentices.

And from Sheffield Museums
Often described as the backbone of Sheffield’s cutlery and tool making industries, the Little Mesters were a network of craftspeople working out of small workshops or from their own homes.They were self-employed and carried out the different stages of the production of goods, which were ordered and sold by Master Manufacturers. They mostly concentrated on individual aspects of forging, grinding or finishing and would also specialize in particular products, such as razors, penknives or surgical instruments.
At the height of their population in the mid 1800s, Little Mesters were making a vast contribution to the variety of products which bore a Sheffield stamp. Their reputation is one of skilled work and quality products. Only a handful of Little Mesters’ remain in Sheffield today.

[Pleater]

My father worked in Sheffield at the long gone Sammy Foxes steel works, and we lived in Barnsley, a nearby town, so little mester was a common description back when I was growing up in the 1950s, though perhaps a little more widely than described, any skilled man with a small establishment might be described as a little mester to make clear that he was his own man with a skill - or more likely more than one, who employed skilled men and most likely took on apprentices in his own works - a garage owner for instance.

I have a couple of pairs of scissors made by little mesters in Sheffield, bought some 50 years ago, also knives which are probably older than I am - but if I ever needed to dispose of a body.....

Anne the Pleater

[NHhighlander]

regarding historic events of violence against the flying shuttle
https://www.google.com/search?q=john...1753+angry+mob
https://victorianweb.org/painting/fmb/paintings/14.html

I have come to understand that flying shuttles do raise emotions (to my surprise).
Facts are mostly contrary to dealing with emotions, so I won't even try that.
Advice, of a practical kind, appreciated.
I would want to be able to share or ask about flying shuttles, but I don't want to hurt people's feelings. About that, I am sorry.

[Steve Ashton]

Perhaps it would be helpful to ask - Why do you want a flying shuttle?

[NHhighlander]

Perhaps it would be helpful to ask - Why do you want a flying shuttle?

THAT is a fair question, that in (respectful, I hope) make-believe classic philosopher way (that I am not, it's my sister who'll get the degree) I will respond first with another question, and then with a parallel construction, or simile.

the question:
why would anybody want to ask?

The simile:
My First Nation didn't know heddles until Peace Corps people came around. They did Good Work, capitals, respect for them. Were any of those post-post-modern Aymara Kilt Kops to actually know any technology history and tradition they would go frantic, but, one, they are quite ignorant while verbose in their invented Leninist-Antifa-Coca-xenophobic ideology, two, they know better than to bother the women that still strive to make some kind of living with their hands weaving true homespun handwoven cloth, with less work because they now have heddles. Aymara women can be fierce.
My mother didn't know heddles, thus I didn't either, and she wove her way to a national prize in another country just like that. The first time I used heddles in my life, less than two years ago, I was so amazed! That story is somewhere in the Xmarks forums.
It saves so much work! "I'm in love," said the Robot Club kid when I showed him the digital angle measuring tool.


Heddles are part of technology progress, like rollers for the warp and cloth, like hand shuttles with a pirn or bobbin, like free-standing framework looms. Like flying shuttles. All those are absent from looms used by the ancient Greek (or Scot?). Or by the Aymara, since we're at it. "Pure hand-woven" cloth should use none of those artificial labor-savers?

For 300 years or so, most production handlooms in mills in the West and then everywhere have had flying shuttles, some reasons have been explained by others in this thread. Domestic and artist and hobby looms not that usually, also valid reasons were shared, but, if you were making cloth for commerce and you had the choice and access to the technology, you used it, kinda obvious, after initial resistance (my previous post) begat survival competition making extinct those who didn't adopt it.

Flying shuttles in handlooms are rare today because handwoven (proto-)industry is mostly dead, mostly not even rescued in museums. I found this be-au-ti-ful Japanese flying shuttle loom, described as 19th century, but that's the only ancient flying shuttle loom I have found so far in museums, for a technology 300 years old installed in probably over 100,000s of looms (just guessing).

The medium-is-the-message.
My "character," that imaginary, (my) fictional representation of the weaver that did the total border plaids at some moment between 1750 and the early 1800s, he (could have been a "she," but I have named him Alasdair) is the kind of "out-of-the-box" person that, besides weaving tartan "different" than anybody did before or after, most likely would also adopt a more efficient technology already more than 50 years old, my fictional tale taking place in the 1770s.

Not to drag Peter MacDonald into this, he deserves better, his videos show him using a flying shuttle to weave tartan, quite brilliant. If I ever have a contemporary master to imitate in this art, that is him.


-------

I feel more than a bit embarrassed about all the above, I hope not too passive-aggressive kind of missing the point, because I actually do know that for some people flying shuttles have an emotional content, thereabout with "who belongs" in a clan, Guillies, the color of sporrans...
When Nova Scotia invented a Province Tartan (1950s?), this very first non-clan application confused the Lord Lyon, plus there was opposition from some major Scottish association there, "(this) would allow people of non-Scot ancestry to wear a kilt." As that nowadays non-PC ad said, "we've come a long way, baby." (am I that old?)

I did come across a 1980s document by an American gentleman (was it in Colorado?) trying to "prove" in over 8 pages of text that flying shuttles have no business in the workshop of someone claiming to do be a hand weaver. Beside my grin imagining what would have been his reaction to a Hattersley, I was surprised at his passion. Not so much at his ignorance as that was a given - he insisted that flying shuttles are useless when having weft of different colors - but, most than anything, I felt compassion for the fellow's anger, and much, much more for the members of his Guild, as his exposition was the core of their mimeographed newsletter that season, and he was their president.

I have read some of your writings, Steve, about accepting different viewpoints in this forum, avoiding judgement or aggression.
I second that, I appreciate that.
A brat-ish and inappropriate answer I could have given to your question - even if much shorter - would have been "I want a flying shuttle because I can!" That's not the point. In my case, I do want a flying shuttle, which obviously doesn't answer the question of, "why do you want it?" And whether I can, that remains a question, so far no full success

If I try to analyze deeper motivations - I like that kind of exercise - it's a mixed bag. I love mechanic things that move, I love automation. I am uttermost lazy while at the same time spending hours, days, weeks, hundreds of dollars developing something that will save(?) me a few minutes, for something that doesn't cure hunger or help world peace... I think a flying shuttle is just so cool!

Imitating a 1230 AD manuscript. Why spend a week doing it, when I was able to spend a few weeks making my own automaton? BTW, that's a cast of my own hand, my wife finds it creepy.



However, I do know that not everybody shares my view, some people may fell between hurt and judgemental, and that's kind of OK, because such reaction is part of the life in this Scot thing where there are so many issues to disagree with, that, if we think that having a different opinion is wrong - our own or the other fellow's - we just should, must give up.
In that situation, I'd rather find us a way to walk past each other, safe and sure of our own conviction, as we are sure of our own manliness or femininity as the case may be when passing by another costumed-for-the-occasion person at a Highland Games whose attire we're not quite happy with, and it's rather clear that they don't like ours..., that up-and-down look as if we were debutantes at the ball so funny, and, who knows, perhaps help each other as we can in what the other wants to be helped with, without pushing our own viewpoint too much. I believe that, in that sense, you have been great! No complaints.

I have received FANTASTIC advice from people here that very much do not like flying shuttles. Be it they say so plain and clear, be it they try to be gentle about it, I am fine and very grateful regarding the true intent of their heart, which I think has great positive vibes. Nobody has gone Kilt Kop on me (yet!), and I'm sure that if anybody did, you would give the proper treatment, no doubt.
Likewise, I won't force to accept and install in your loom a flying shuttle on anybody, ever. Moreover, the day I write and publish a little tract about the loom I want to honor the dissenting view, I shall mention that "some disagree that a flying shuttle was part of a 1770s Highland loom," because, without going every-opinion-is-valid about this one, indeed right here in the forum we have written contemporary proof that there is no agreement. (Funny how, as I keep searching 1700s loom technology, I am starting to get my own posts among the results...)

Oh, there will be a thick disclaimer anyway: as much as I have looked, contacted museums (only received one answer so far, she was going to check... silence since), apparently nobody knows within any reasonable degree of historical fact what a 1770s-Highlands-loom-for-tartan-production looks like if different in any way from 1800s or later generic domestic looms. I'm obviously inventing here (ancient nuances of the word, here), where the facts of production proto-industry mills are mentioned by some, but not explained or detailed. Not really proud of it, but mere necessity. Like a paleontologist rebuilding a dinosaur out of a few bones and some imprints in mud, that reconstruction depends on how much this scientist knows about dinosaurs and about life and everything else. That was my father, a geologist (and wannabee weaver - he couldn't much, someone had to have a real job in the family. And bagpipes player. and carver. etc.), before plate tectonics became an accepted "fact," as he believed that was the best explanation, while his colleagues didn't.

I am still learning and seeking information (hint, hint) about loom technology, about tartan history, VERY inconvenienced that there is extremely little on weaving tools for the era, and some of it obviously wrong. Notice this 1780s picture?, the closest to "my" time that I have found. There is no way that loom will work, the cloth take-up roll is just hangin' loose, that warp has no tension! (click to enlarge)


But!, it has the warp slanted, which I had never seen elsewhere (yes, I am that ignorant), but which "I already had a hunch about," that will improve quality enormous, I'm confident, I will modify "my reconstruction" accordingly, now that I have historic proof that existed, not just my own invention (but, in the Highlands? Alasdair's father, Donald, also a weaver as that was the family craft, communicated with French Enlightenment people, I got that covered). (interesting that this attachment broke a minute ago - hope all OK)

LOL. Now you know how I already have 216 pages in my historical novel's manuscript in less than 3 weeks. Takes twice, maybe four times the amount of time actually spent writing to do research, as I obviously want my facts to be as accurate as I can, despite the messiness of the period and very contradictory opinions, very. It helps that I have been sick for a week, in bed. Today feeling almost OK, thank you.