Leclerc L Model

 

In 2019 my local guild was given an old L model Leclerc Loom.  It was unlike any Leclerc loom I'd seen before, and had many similarities to a Macomber.

It had been in storage for a number of years before it came to us, and needed some TLC.  When Covid hit, there wasn't time nor energy to do much, although we did get a warp on it.  However, the TLC we did was insufficient, and it sat for a long time before I had the energy to deal with it.

Eventually the pressure to get the thing working again built, and over the winter I managed to make new aprons for this and several of the other guild 'herd', and Doug took a look at the mechanical side of it and got the four shafts currently in the loom working again.

Yesterday I finally found enough spoons to dress the loom with a 'practice' warp (with help from a guild member to beam the warp).  There are still some issues with it, but at least it is able to be woven on now.

I knew the loom had been used by a production weaver and was curious to see how it worked and was pleasantly surprised to discover that the effort to treadle it was minimal.  

We have a tiny group of new weavers so I'm hoping that some of them will give this loom a try.  It's pretty large, but since it *could* go up to 12 shafts (we have the shafts, just need some more heddles), plus it has a double back beam, it would be nice to keep it for members who would like to use more than four shafts.  However, if it doesn't get used, we will look at selling it.

In the meantime, the new therapy *appears* to be helping, although I am a far distance from where I would like to be.  I talk to the pain doctor in 10 days, and I am hoping that I will be enough improved that I can begin reducing the pain medications (side effects are being controlled by additional pills - sigh).  But mostly I'm hoping to be able to start walking again.  

Like the old L model loom, I need some adjustments and a great deal of tweaks, but so far I *can* still weave.  I'm just hoping that if I improve enough, I could consider teaching in person locally, and grow those newbie weavers a little bit.  I suspect the reason they aren't weaving is that they don't feel confident enough - yet.

If I can grow my energy and the number of activity spoons, I could see if they would like a weaving study group.  But it all depends on if I can dig myself out of this dry 'fitness' well, find more spoons in my energy drawer.

TBD.