A temple is a handy thing

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Here is the tools and supplies I used to make a temple for use with my frame loom for weaving washcloths.

A temple is handy thing for weaving. A temple or stretcher is a device to maintain the width of your woven piece, which keeps selvedges straighter and prevents the width from drawing in. It has little teeth to grab your warp and help hold it in position.

Glimraka USA has pictures of their adjustable wooden temples on their website link here
http://www.glimakrausa.com/products-temples.html

I needed something to help me keep my weaving width more uniform so I decided to improvise.



Since my woven piece would be 11 inch wide I figured I could put a couple of little teeth on a ruler. This ruler had a little metal strip which I pulled out with the pliers. Then using the little hack saw I carefully cut a little notch at the 11-1/2 inch mark, not too deep, maybe 1/16th to 1/8th of an inch. Then I cut another notch at the 1/2 inch mark, so my two notches are 11 inches apart. The notches will hold the teeth of my temple.


I straightened out a large paper clip. This will be the tooth on my temple. Using the wire cutting notch on the pliers, I cut a large paper clip in half. Then I bent the wire about 1/2 inch from the end. I fitted the bent wire into the notch on the ruler. It sticks out almost 1/2 an inch. Then I wrapped the rest of the wire around the ruler.


The wire still rocked a little bit in the notch so I bent the wire kind of sideways so it would resist rocking. Then my temple was done. It took about five minutes.


In this picture you can see the temple in use. If you look at the two outer warp strings, they are kind of spread apart by the temple teeth wires. As you can see I was losing about 1/4 inch on each side, but overall this woven piece came out better for having used the temple.

For a piece wider than 12 inches, I would get a wooden yardstick from the hardware store and cut that to size, then cut the notches. It doesn't matter if your measurement doesn't start at zero, what matters is how far apart the notches are. So a notch at 2 inch mark and the other notch at 26 inch means the teeth will be 24 inch apart.

I hope that helps or inspires an idea. If you have any suggestions for improving this, you may leave a comment.

Have a good day!