A Varpapuu Loom from Finland

She said, "Varpapuu"

I replied, "bless you" and reached over to hand her a tissue.

But she wasn't sneezing.  Varpapuu is, instead, the maker of a loom.  This loom.  This loom, that somehow came home with me.

The loom is Finnish and, as you can see from the label has lots of words that I can't pronounce.

It's a cute little table loom that's had a few modifications.  It looks like someone decided they needed a two treadle floor loom and converted it to accommodate their needs.  I'm kind of sad about this, but the structure of the loom is sound and I think I can have it back to near-original condition with very little effort.

The levers that rise and lower the shed have been taken away, and some rollers put in the top of the castle.

The big problem with this roller set up is that you cannot make the sheds properly.  For those weavers out there, you can probably tell right away why it won't work.  But it took me a while to see the problem.

When you lower shed 1, shed 2 goes up.  When you lower shed 2, shed 1 goes up.  It is impossible to lower both shed 1 and shed 2 at the same time, and likewise, it is not possible to rise shed 1 and shed 2 at the same time.  This makes weaving twills a bit difficult.

So I took the rollers out and returned it to the original style which is basically a jack loom.  Each set of heddles can be raised independently to make the shed.

I need to make a few parts and create a beater bar (hmm, over head or regular beater, which shall I choose?). But it needs very little work otherwise, and hardly any spit and polish.




Couldn't find much information on google about this loom, but I did come across one gem. Big thankyou to The Sweaty Knitter, Weaver and Devotee of Other Fiber Arts blog for posting a link to this pdf file: Dressing the Varpapuu loom.

So, if anyone out there knows more about this loom, please let me know.  It's an awesome little fellow and I exactly what I want in a loom.  36", table loom, with levers on the castle!  Once I get this up and working, I can get rid of all my other looms, and I won't miss them, they are all either too big or too small.  This one is perfect and I might even be able to make it fold down with the warp on (see the pdf I linked to above).