Scott & Deb's Place

Rebuilding a modern Macomber floor loom.

I recently had the opportunity to rebuild a Macomber jack-style floor loom. A fellow SCAdian had recovered several looms that were being removed from a house. In the process of removing the looms the workers had hacked them up to get them out the doors. From August 2002 until January 2003 much of my free time was spent working on restoring the larger loom, a 40" Model B5. I estimate I spent over 60 hours working on this loom, not counting shopping trips for tools and parts, or phone calls with the Macomber loom company. The staff at Macomber was very helpful along the way.

Before and After Pictures

I met with the Lady who rescued the looms in late July 2002. After looking over the looms it was decided that two of the looms, a Macomber 40" and a Macomber 30", could be saved. The third loom was an antique rug loom and had been sawed completely in half. I agreed to repair the larger loom in exchange for the smaller loom. I initially thought that materials costs could be kept under $100. Ordering all the replacement parts directly from Macomber would have cost $600-$800. I did have to order a few pieces of hardware from them and the final cost was about $125.

Much of the wood frame was destroyed when I acquired the loom. The top castle was cracked on both sides and the side posts were ripped in half with chunks missing. The entire front assembly was never recovered and had to be contructed based on pieces from the smaller loom. The rods that pull the harnesses had all been bent in half and only one tie-rod was left attached. Many of the harnesses were bent as were the jacks. Also missing was the take-up warp beam.

The first part in restoring the loom was to rebuild the castle and front assembly. In order to balance cost versus strength these pieces were done with poplar. While the castle was cracked and unuseable there were enough pieces intact that I could make a pattern. The first major snafu I ran into was when I went to replace the posts. They had been glued to the bases and could not be removed without destroying them. I ended up having to rebuild the bases also. This wasn't too bad until I went to put everything together. While removing the bases I had to move the pedals out of the way. When I put the new bases on the pedals were in the wrong position. I had to remove the new bases, move the pedals, and re-attach the bases.

With the castle and main body together I then worked on the front assembly. Since nothing was left of the original I had to use the front of the smaller loom as a model. Doing the angle cut's was difficult and slow. The cross post was made from a pine 2x4 since none of the local lumber yards carried 2" thick poplar or oak. The metal bars that hold the front assembly to the frame were made out of mild-steel bar. These were traced from those on the smaller loom. When it was all put together the angles were right and the bars held the loom steady. Hats off to Macomber for standardizing their looms.

The warp beam was the next part. Here I needed to order the ratchet and gear from Macomber. The length of the beam was too long for any home lathe so we settled on an octagon design. While not as nice as a round beam I had seen it done on a few looms so felt confident it would work. It took a while to find the wood but luckily at this point our Lowe's got some Fir 4x4's. (Wish they would have had them when I did the front.) Once I got all the parts the beam went together a lot easier than I thought it would. Patience was key when making all these precise cuts.

Now that I had something that looked like a loom again it was time to move on to the draw rods. I had a stock of 14 gauge wire and thought it would be easy to straighten. Finding a commercial wire straightener was futile. I made a jig that didn't quite work and the 14 gauge didn't stay stiff like the 12 gauge in the original construction. After calling for a quote on replacement parts and choking at the cost I decided to look at my Harrisville loom, which uses wires instead of rods. Another trip to the store and I found some twisted wire and ferrels for support wires. The wires required s-hooks to attach but none could be found in the right size. I got around this by buying a dog chain and cutting out the links to make the s-hooks. This worked even better than the store hooks since the chain links were slightly elongated. The 14 gauge wire did work for well for the tie rods since they were much shorter.

The loom was pretty much done except for a few parts. The spring for the warp beam rathcet was stretched and I still needed a way to attach a tie-off rod to the take-up beam. Cutting a couple turns out of the spring did the trick for the rathcet. For the tie-off rod I stole from the Harrisville loom design again, and used non-strectch nylon strapping. I also had to order a set of jack-stops that I was unaware of until I went to hang the harnesses.

Now that it is all done I'm not sure I'd do it again. This project has to be one of the most complicated projects I've ever done. I had several long calls to Macomber and they were extremely helpful, even while knowing that I was building parts rather than ordering them from them. After making many of the parts myself I can truly say the costs are reasonable for the quality of workmanship and the time involved. I'm likely to be not so cheap when I work on the second loom.