Putting together Amy's Nilart Loom

Back in December my college roommate Amy contacted me to let me know she was ready to get her loom back together and weaving again.  I love helping my friends out with this sort of thing, especially when she has been off her loom for so long.  We started in on getting the loom together and Amy had to confess that she must have left a tupperware container with parts/shuttles/etc back at her rental.....7 years ago.  These were obviously long gone.  So as we put the loom together, we were missing the four pieces that connected the front beam to the castle, and the lever to advance the warp.

Castle

Shaded area of the missing part

I took measurements, but I really didn't think that I could re-create these parts with my level of woodworking knowledge.  So we turned to Charles at FORMA.  He deals Leclerc looms and could hopefully help us.  We called him first thing Sunday morning and headed over with pictures and the loom number.

We learned that it was a Nilart Leclerc, which was no longer in production.  Charles got our the above paper copy of the loom parts and took down what we were missing.  He had to call Canada, and they run on their own time up there, especially during the holidays. He promised to put the order in ans was hoping that they would have some of the older parts floating around for us.  

So finally, Amy got her pieces in from Leclerc and we got together last weekend. Leclerc still makes these parts, but for a different loom.  So the pieces were just a little too big to fit into the slots already in the loom. I had packed my toolbox and Dremel tool for this project.

Unfortunately my Dremel attachment was too wide to carve out the slot, and we only needed about one millimeter on either side to take down, some were easier than others,  My triangle sander fit in pretty well, but to get all the way to the back we had to get our fingers in there and sand out the interior. (Yes, I'm sure there were better ways to do so, but we were working with what I had on-hand).

Part #NA-111, almost in.

Finally together, at long last!

Double back beam.  I figured out the top break, but I need to compare to mine to fix up the bottom back beam break. Amy won't be using two beams...yet...

You can tell the new parts in the lighter wood.  Amy is oiling down the rest of the loom thoroughly since the poor thing has been sitting in storage.  I'm excited for her to get up and weaving again!