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Monday, May 5, 2014

I am beginning to feel assured that we will get no more snow, but I am not yet secure in that notion. After all, this is Minnesota, and here we are always waiting for that 'other shoe to drop' when it comes to the weather. In other words, if it is nice today, it will probably be either really hot and muggy tomorrow, or it will snow and sleet tomorrow. It has happened that way long enough that people in this state are always waiting for the bad news. We have been trained by the weather to be suspicious of a nice day and anticipating that it won't last long.

But even so, I am in good spirits! I am in count-down mode to make a road trip to Chicago to pick up a another AVL loom.

This is the loom waiting for me in Chicago.

This one has air assist mechanisms for the harnesses and flybox shuttles! My plan is to take the air assist mechanisms from this new loom and install them on my current AVL. I will have to do some adapting because I have 24 harnesses on my loom rather than the 16 on the loom from Chicago, and I have the newer version of the flyboxes which uses a rubber tube as an elastic powered return for the fly mechanism . . . .

Newer flybox shuttle mechanism.

. . . . rather than a spring, which in the case of the loom from Chicago (far bottom of photo below) is replaced by the air assist mechanism.

It will take some thinking to get that one to work, but I have confidence . . . .

. . . . I should be able to figure it out!

The unaltered original loom will probably placed on the market for about $3,500. It is a 60" - 16 harness AVL mechanical dobby loom, with a sticky (sand paper) breast beam, auto cloth advance, auto cloth storage, and a 1 yard sectional beam. The loom is in excellent shape. The loom has been maintained very well, which explains the wood oil marks on some of the wooden pieces. Buyer will pay shipping (as is standard). It will not have the fly shuttle boxes, since I may need those in adapting the flyboxes onto my current loom.