Never fear broken warp threads again!

Every Weaver experiences, more often than we would wish, a broken warp thread, or a broken floating selvedge.  When that happens, we need a way to tie in a replacement, and hang it off the back apron with enough tension to match the tension coming off the beam.  Sometimes nothing has broken, we just want to tie in our floating selvedges that way rather than on the beam with the rest of the warp.  Or sometimes we just need a hanging weight to give a bit more tension to a slack warp thread.

And, you may have noticed, the weaving marketplace is not overflowing with options.

But you can make your own for a few dollars spent at the local hardware store, and less than half an hour of work.

The Materials:

A half-inch wood dowel, cut to 5″ lengths
5/8″ washers for weights
Smaller hole fender washers for the bottom stop
A few wood screws
A few cup hooks

The Assembly

Screw the fender washer to one (bottom) end, using a wood screw.
(Start a hole if you need to with a small drill)
Screw a cup hook in the other (top) end
Slide weights over the top end (add or subtract weights as needed)

To Use

Wind the repair thread around the spool,
and a time or two around the cup hook.
Add washer weights as needed
Thread through the reed and attach to your work and Unwind more thread as needed