The Warp-Weighted Loom and What to Buy

This module reconstructs two classes. Vesterheim’s five-day Weaving a Boat Rug on a Warp-Weighted Loom, taught by Monika Sunnanå Ravnanger, weaves on the oppstadgogn, the loom that “stands up against the wall” with “warp threads… knotted to the stone or ceramic weights,” and knots in pile of wool, thread, or textile scraps in the manner of the Norwegian boat rug, “the most documented and preserved floss textile in Norway” ¹. North House’s five-day class builds a tabletop loom in two days, warps it with stone weights, and weaves a small rya ². Neither plan is published; this follows the sources cited, and the sample’s numbers are estimates.

The loom

The Norwegian oppstadvev has two heavy side posts leaning against a wall, carrying a cloth beam with a row of holes for sewing on the warp. The warps hang down to weights; a heddle rod gives the second shed; and weaving goes from the top down, the weft beaten upward and the cloth rolled onto the beam while the weaver stands ³. Marta Hoffmann’s The Warp-Weighted Loom (1964) is the standard study ⁴.

The pile that Vesterheim’s class knots in keeps you warm worn against the body and sheds rain facing out ¹. Museum boat rugs are 135 to 160 cm wide, woven in two widths sewn together, on a ground of point twill with Smyrna knots, at about 4 to 8 warp ends per centimeter ⁵.

A loom to build

The Dark Ages Re-Creation Company’s plans need two 2x4 uprights cut to 72 inches, two braces from a 1x4 bolted at 14 and 67 inches, 6-inch blocks at 38 inches to carry the heddle rod, a header beam and heddle rod, four U-hooks, and eight carriage bolts, about $20 in all. Their improved loom used a 1.5-inch dowel beam with holes every inch, a header lowered 4 inches, and a bottom brace raised 4 inches ⁶. That frame weaves cloth up to about 90 cm wide, leaving room at the uprights; a double-cloth experiment kept its warp about 15 cm clear of each upright ⁷.

Weights

Loom weights were soapstone, grooved beach stones, elongated stones, or fired clay with holes, and they “should weigh about the same”; today people use cast weights or sandbags ⁸. How much they must pull depends on the yarn:

• About 20 g per thread for fine wool of about 1,000 m per 100 g, in experiments with 275 g ceramic weights ⁹.
• 50 g per warp end for Marta Kløve Juuhl’s diamond twill in Spelsau single yarn ¹⁰.
• 1 kg weights with 15 ends each, about 66 g per thread, for double cloth ⁷.

“A good warp-weighted loom weight is half a kilo”; Robbie LaFleur cast 40 cement weights in paper cups, most 485 to 520 g ¹¹. Hang them side by side at one level, in a row as wide as the cloth or a little wider ⁹. At a 2013 Vesterheim class, uneven stones made a weaving draw in: “be sure you have enough rocks!” ¹²

A sample (estimate): 40 cm wide at 6 ends per cm is 240 ends; at about 50 g each that’s about 12 kg of weights, such as twelve 1 kg weights of 20 ends each, or twenty-four half-kilo weights of 10.

Yarn

Use a firm wool warp. Vävstuga’s Möbelåtta 8/2 wool, the warp Sätergläntan’s rya class uses, is $18 per 100 g ¹³. For pile, Rauma Ryegarn is a Norwegian Spelsau rug yarn ¹⁴. Tablet-weaving cards for a starting border are about $14 for 25 ¹⁵.

Try it

Before building, weigh a dozen flat stones from the garden on a kitchen scale and sort them into groups within 10 percent of each other. If you can’t make a full set, plan to cast cement weights or sew sandbags.