As part of the diagnostic process Doug had turned up the oil flow on the oiler and while following hoses hither and thither I guess the routing of the exhaust hoses got disturbed.
All of that is to say that when I started weaving in earnest yesterday, I noticed that there was a great deal of oil all over the right hand side of the loom.
A very great deal. In fact, it was fairly dripping off the metal rollers and loom cross members, although it looks like it missed the cloth. I'll find out when I take it off the cloth storage beam. If there is some oil on the cloth I'm hoping that I'll be able to scour it out in the wet finishing. :(
It would appear that one or more of the hoses actually wormed its way out of the jug used to catch the exhaust so that the oil was simply spraying out into the air. Either that or it was spraying out of the jug itself. Or both.
Needless to say I did not weave today at all as Doug was working today. He got the hoses sorted out tonight, turned down the oil flow and tomorrow I'll start weaving again, this time watching to see if there is further spray back from the exhaust hoses.
The photo above isn't in focus - it was really hard to crouch down beside the loom and get a photo of the tangle of hoses on the right side of the loom. The black hoses are the air supply, the white/clear ones are the exhaust hoses.
Again, this photo doesn't tell the whole story as there are yet more hoses at the front of the loom too.
When the loom is working properly it's a joy to weave on. But when you add this much mechanical and pneumatic assistance, there are times when it does go wrong. Unfortunately I'm not a very patient person so the process last week of figuring out what was wrong and then having to wait while Doug found the correct parts and fixed it was very stressful for me. :(
However rather than fret about it today I went pressing, then came home and worked on Magic edits, did some spinning, read for a while, visited with my friend across the street and even did a bit of fringe twisting. So it wasn't an unproductive day - just one without weaving. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to finish the first Fox Fibre cloth and start on the next one.
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2 comments:
How frustrating! Hope the cloth has no oil on (if it has, that it will come out with the finishing) and that you are able to weave again today. Hopefully all problems are than behind you regarding this.
Oh nooo! I hate depending on someone else to fix something... even when it's just waiting for the loom doctor to get home from work. I hope you're back up and running pronto, and that no harm was done to the fabric.
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