Lease Strings

It is one of those Ah-ha, elementary my dear Watson, moments.  If anyone can provide a reference, or has any information, as to when lease strings were first introduced into weaving, please share it with us. 

To describe how they are prepared and used is a little more difficult to explain, although not to show.  The final result is shown in the picture.  Before embarking on the detailed explanation, three notational details. 

(1) Since I am notoriously bad at telling left from right, particularly when looking at a loom from various angles, I will talk about directions on the loom as follows:  When sitting in normal weaving position, you are looking North (N); left is to the West (W), right is to the East (E) and you are sitting at the South (S) end of the loom.  Now E is E and W is W and never the twain shall meet (or get confused). The assumption throughout is that the loom will be dressed (both beaming and sleying) from E to W.

(2) Since we are dressing the loom and not weaving, the ***end*** of the
warp is the cut end after the beaming is complete.  (It will become the beginning of the woven fabric, i.e., the end tied to the cloth beam.)

(3) I will eventually be describing two lease string pairs on the final warp.  When speaking generically about the lease strings (LS) they will not be followed by a number.  When I want to distinguish between the the LS, the one closest to the end of the warp [see (2)] I will call LS1 and the one about a yard from the end of the warp I will call LS2 (only LS2 is seen in the picture). 

Although there probably are applications of LS to warping without sections, they will not be addressed here since we have no intention of ever going back to anything wider than one inch sections (except for short (less than 3 yards) warps on a 10" table loom).

The general idea is to secure, as completely and surely as possible, not only the cross in each section but the relative locations ***and twists*** of each section with respect to every other. LS allows you to do this with the minimum amount of fussing and time wasting with snippets of string and their knots around individual crosses and groups of threads.  The result is that, when sleying, one can, indeed must, trust the crosses as surely as one one must trust one's compass when orienteering. 

Enough chatter, on with the method.

1. Cut two pieces of cord (the ones in the photo show up well but are probably a little too thick for comfort - light package wrapping cord is about right) roughly 1.5 times the width of the final warp. 

2. Tie the end of both strings together and to the warp beam to the E of
the first section.

3. Beam the first section until all but the last yard are on the beam. 

4. Make a cross - we use the gadget shown on our J-made page (modeled after the front end of an AVL tension box), but any method will do.

5. Pass one string on one side of the cross and the second string on the other, to hold the cross.  Make sure that you are consistent about which of the two LS strings is on the N and on the S.  Two different colors of string help in this.

6. Tie an overhand knot (half of a square knot) just to the W of the cross.

You have now begun to form LS2.

7. Secure the loose LS to the W of the cross  with a rubber band so that LS lies to the W of the first section.  This is necessary so that the last yard of warp does not trap LS2.

8. Wind on the the last yard of warp. About 9-12 inches from the end of the warp, repeat steps 4, 5, and 6 with new pieces of string.

You have now begun to form LS1.

9. Tie a fairly loose (you'll have to untie it eventually) overhand knot into the end of the section of warp, so that LS1 cannot slip out the end of the warp.

10. Secure the overhand knot and the loose warp ends within the section with a piece of masking tape. 

11. Bring both LS1 and LS2 over the top of the beamed section and secure to the E of the beamed section.  This is essential to ensure that neither LS1 nor LS2 are trapped under the next section. 

12. Continue this process until all sections are beamed. 

13. Securely tie off the W end of both LS separately.

What you now have is a loaded warp beam with each section separately held down at its end near or over the overhand knots and two LS running the width of the warp, LS1 about a foot from the end and LS2 about a yard from the end.  The exact measurements here depend on the structure of your loom, but are not fussy.

The next task is to bring the entire end of the warp to the S with sufficient loose warp to allow for sleying and reeding.  In principle, you can simply pick up the ends of LS1, release the brake on the warp beam and pull.  LS1 in combination with the overhand knots will prevent anything untoward from happening.  (In the past our problem has always been that bringing one section at a time forward and trying to get an arm around the warp beam to unwind one or two turns of one section without getting a twist in it, or dropping it, was a chancy business.)

What we do is to run a piece of tape across the entire warp, right on top of the tape holding down each section. We then pick up the entire warp by both the transverse tape and LS1.  The choice of whether to pass the warp over the castle, over the frames, or to move all the heddles to the E and pass the warp through the frames to the W of all the heddles depends on individual preference and the construction of the loom.  We use the last of these methods - see picture.

Now one can sley and reed the warp as usual. We choose to hold one section of LS1 cross at a time on the board whose picture is on the J-made page so that the cross is held securely with what used to be its E end on top.  Note that LS1 still keeps all the crosses of the unsleyed sections in their original order and orientation.  The advantage of the board is that it is easy to stop sleying and answer the phone without loosing track of which thread comes next.

The beauty of the LS is that one could use the warp as a jump rope and still not loose any of the crosses, their order, or their relative positions.  Wow!

Now finish dressing the loom and tying onto the cloth beam. 

LS2 should now be between the back beam and the frames.  Replace each of the strings in LS2 with a stick and tie the sticks to the loom frame to form a classic lease stick arrangement.  This will serve to allow easy repair of broken warp threads as well as easy tie-on of additional warp, if needed.

Cute, ain't it?

Hi, Tom--

Attached is a photo of my first lease string warp.  I thought you'd be interested in the method I used for anchoring the lease strings while
winding on the next section.  I used the idea of knitting bobbins, then
I wrapped the strings over/under/over/under a couple of rakes, then
inserted a short length of skinny dowel into the rakes.  A satay skewer would do just as well.  It's quick to anchor & quick to pull out when you're
ready to do the next section.

Hope you can see all this.  The warp is two different naturals and the
lease string is white seine twine.  Lesson learned: use a contrasting
color for the lease string.

Ruth