A Dowel Replacement on A Kromski Loom

Over time the tension on the warp may bend your dowel rods on your Kromski loom. This is not a big problem to deal with. Dowels are available in every home store and in some craft stores. There is nothing special about the dowels Kromski uses on their looms. They are hardwood dowels. You can use a bent apron rod BUT it is best to keep the distance from the rod to the heddle at an equal distance across. When I noticed the bend on one of my Kromski apron rod dowels after using it a few months, I went out to buy dowels to replace the bent dowel. I bought a same sized dowel - you will need to cut it to length - even a small hand saw can do this - and I decided to buy an OAK dowel. Oak dowels are slightly more expensive but worth having a harder wood.

Home stores should sell perfectly straight dowels - as they should sell perfectly straight lumber but that does not always happen. Take some time to find the straightest dowel the store has. Take it to a flat surface in the store - heavy oak plywood is often flat - and roll the dowel on the flat surface and see that that it rolls flat and does not bump up at any point along its length. It pays to take time to get a good straight dowel.

I thought that this was going to be final solution, but wood is wood and in humid areas and with tension being put on the dowels on the loom, even the best round dowel will eventually warp or bend. I looked at the apron rods that Ashford uses - they are not dowels. They are flat strips of wood. If used with the flat side UP - meaning the edge of the flat wood strip faces the heddle and not the larger flat surface of the wood. I went out and bought a 1/4" thick board in one of the Home Stores. These thin boards are considered "hobby" boards or wood. I cut a strip off of that board as wide as the dowel on my Kromski and I attached it with the existing TexSolv apron cords that I had put on (see the last article). It is very hard to bend a strip of wood along its edge.

I only replaced on dowel with this flat apron rod. The cloth beam apron rod Oak dowel that I replaced the Kromski dowel with has been fine so far. If it ever needs replacement, I have more of the flat board to make a flat apron rod for this side.

It works! It will require someone with a table saw to cut the strip of wood to the correct width and then the length needs to be cut the same length as the Kromski dowel.

Different Apron Cords on a Kromski Loom

Kromski several years back changed the apron cords on their looms. At one time you received a long strand of nylon cord and the Kromski instructions told you to cut the cord into equal lengths and form looms with the cord which required holding the cord ends together in a candle and hoping to get them to melt - which meant needing to do this for all cords to come out to equal length loops which is not always easy. Then they decided to change how to use this long length of cord and put a screw at each end of the warp and cloth beams and tied the cord between the screws and showed in their new instructions how to wrap the cord around the apron rods to form "V"s to hold the apron rod loosely in place.

This works if you are using their "warp helper" block to warp your loom but did not work well when I tried to use this when direct warping. The problem on a 32" wide loom was emphasized when the dowel rod would dip down on one end while warping the other end and across. Some love this new setup and if it works for you don't change it. But I struggled with this for several months and then went out looking for an alternative.

I could have cut the cords into pieces and used the old instructions which are still easy to find on the internet to cut and burn the loops together and use them as they used to be uses. But I really did not like that. I looked to see what other looms do. One other company uses a plastic band to hold the rod to the beam. Another uses something called TexSolv - a product commonly used in multi-shaft weaving. The feature of TexSolv is that it is nylon cord made up of a chain of small loops that make it easy to put an end through one of those loops, pull and have the length of the cord on the loom exact as long as you you put the cord end through the same loop counting up.

I decided that the TexSolv was a great way to put the apron rods onto the beams and I went out to find it. If there is no weaving store near you, several of the weaving websites sell TexSolv. Some have better prices than others. Be aware that this cord is EXPENSIVE. You can buy it by the foot and you can buy it on a spool. I decided - not being sure how much I would need and not sure if at some point I would want to replace the TexSolv cords with new ones - to buy a spool.

Schacht has an excellent video on how to put TexSolv cord on the apron rods and beams of their Rigid Heddle looms and this process is the same for the Kromski. Here is a link to how it is done -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPGVyv3z8T8

Here is how it looks on my loom. Compare this photo to the one above. The apron rod is securely tied to the beam. You will see the two end cords not around the dowel - this is to keep tension off the ends of the dowel when weaving less than the full width of the loom. All I need to do is slip those back over the ends of the dowel.The best thing is that it is so easy to get equal lengths cord that enable your apron rod that you warp and tie onto the same distance from your heddle across the entire length of the apron rod.

Here are some close ups and you can easily see how this cord is constructed with small loops.

A small investment made using the apron rods so much easier. And you can easily slip cords off the dowels for narrow projects to put even tension on the dowels.