Glimåkra Julia
I am happy to report that I have now completed the assembly of my second hard Glimakra Julia countermarche loom. I bought the loom a couple of years ago but was unable to get put it together at the time as we had some work being done at our home and floor space and head space were constrained at the time.
The assembly process was a very good brain training exercise during Melbourne’s most recent Covid-19 lockdown. My first attempt at tying up the lamms and treadles was a fail when I couldn’t get a clean shed. After sleeping on it and starting again, working from the shafts down I managed to get the loom working as it should. The warp tensioning is significantly better and easier to maintain on this loom than on any of the jack-style looms I’ve used in the past.
I was surprised to find that threading the heddles was also more error-free than has been my experience using metal heddles. I had been concerned about how I would identify which shaft a heddle was on, given that the cords and heddles are all white. The Texsolv heddles are easy to move on the shafts so identifying their location wasn’t a problem. I’m still very slow at threading heddles but for this project I made no errors, a rare occurrence for me.
I had not used the Texsolv system before but found it easy, though I had a big breakage rate on the anchor pegs. My theory was that they had become brittle in the warmth of the loom’s previous home in sunny Queensland. I bought 25 straight pegs from Glenora and was able to get the tie up done using some of each type of peg. I also used cotton cord and knots for some of the lines where Texsolv wasn’t really required, e.g. for the temporary heddle bars.
The cords from the lamms to the treadles are anchored with beads as is often recommended. I colour coded my op shop sourced wooden beads green on the upper lamms and blue on the lower lamms and this helped me visually confirm I was getting the tie up right.
I will certainly want to make a few changes but for now I am enjoying my first project, a set of dish cloths or hand towels in broken twill from the September/October 2009 Handwoven magazine. I will decide what they will be used for after I get them off the loom and wet finished.
A Journey with Fibre 
Wow Karen, looks as though it’s been cared for during its past life.
Great find.
I love the Texsolv heddles, are they still joined or have they been separated?
Can’t wait to see the master pieces you’re about to conjure up.
Regards Barb 😉
This loom is an absolute beauty. I suspect the previous owner might have been new to weaving. She didn’t cut the heddles apart but I have. There was an extra set of homemade lower lamms that came with the loom which might point to a problem that the previous owner was trying to solve, interference maybe? The loom was a good buy in every way. Finding reasonably priced shipping from Queensland took a bit of effort and I’m grateful the previous owners were happy to box it up and deal with a long delay in the cartage contractor arriving to pick it up. In the very long term I think this will be my only loom. I’ll make some adjustments then move to six, and then eight shafts.