Building my loom began with a walk in our woods located behind my studio. I looked for fallen trees with straight, narrow trunks and brought several back to my studio. After cutting them into five-foot sections, I chose five that felt right and hand-sanded them to expose the natural surface and patina of the wood.

My friend Wayne and I spent time talking through different construction ideas. We agreed that a heavy base would allow us to avoid using additional supports for the loom. We hoped to find an old barn beam, but none were available. At the local sawmill, I found aromatic cedar trunks that had been reclaimed from trees knocked down during a Florida hurricane and shipped to Ohio. One of these became the base.

(“Tap” the photo above to see the drilling of the side-post holes.)

We drilled holes for the posts and countersunk screws through the bottom of the cedar base to secure them. These screws are the only metal we used in the whole structure, but they give the loom the extra stability we wanted and ensured the posts would not turn.

In the photo above, I’m shaving the bottom four inches of one of the supporting posts to make a clean, tight fit into the four-inch-deep hole in the base. It’s a slow process of removing a bit of wood, testing the fit, and making adjustments so the posts would be tight.

Once the side posts were in place, Wayne and I experimented with different branches before selecting the two we would use for the cross pieces. He tried various positions while I checked their alignment from the front and side. Our goal was to find the placement that would let the center section, used for weaving, hang straight and balanced.

The cross pieces were attached to the side posts using rope, wrapped in a traditional binding pattern. This method holds them very tightly without using additional hardware.

The center section of the loom hangs from the top branch. I used a long, narrow stick from our woods and paired it with two dowels to hold the warp twine. Before adding the warp, we built two supports to hold the branch and dowels in position. These made the warping process much easier.

With the supports in place and everything lined up, I begin to thread the warp twine. When finished, I'll add the shedding rods. 

After the warp was finished, we mounted the center section onto the frame. Now the completed structure  looks and functions like a loom. Seeing it hanging correctly confirmed that the earlier alignment work paid off.

With the frame solid and the warp in place, the loom was complete and ready for weaving