AVL 24 shaft loom

At last a bright light to a cold snowy day - the arrival of my new loom. The boxes were neatly stacked on a plastic sheet in the garage to make the job of getting the heavy parts to the basement a little easier.

Each box is carefully labelled to make the assembly easier. Inside each of the boxes related pieces are then again numbered. DH carefully unboxed the items and moved them down to the basement keeping all parts from the same box together. When a got home from work we had a quick dinner and started the assembly. AVL provides both a printed copy of the manual and a CD version - I mainly used the printed version as I like to have the instructions in front of me.

This new loom is similar to my 1980's AVL but since some changes have been made we made a point of not assuming anything and at least taking a peak at the instructions before proceeding. The older loom is a full frame and the new smaller loom is an A frame. When I was trying to decide what type of loom to buy several reasons brought me back to AVL and this particular model type. One of the reasons is that I prefer looms with a solid square back construction. I tend to vary my weaving and although I do not tend to weave rugs or rep weave often I like to know that the loom can handle whatever I decide to weave.

The newer AVL has more shafts but is still a manual dobby. Even though I design using a computer and WeavePoint, I wanted to control the weaving without electronics involved. Maybe this is because I teach computers all day and this would not provide variety in my life. I am anxious to try out some of the new features that I have chosen and I will discuss them in future blogs. The first warp I chose to try is a simple 4 harness huck lace scarf with a multi fibre warp.