A New Toy

There's a new gadget in my weaver's toolbox, something I've wanted to find for some time now.



This is a Boyce Weaver's Knotter, made in the 1920's and used in industry to knot and trim warp ends. I wanted one to facilitate the process of tying a new warp onto an old one, either to reuse a threading, or in the case of a jacquard loom, simply to avoid having to rethread all 1000+ hooks. The worse the arthritis in my hands gets, the unhappier they are about tying a gazillion knots, especially with fine threads, so the knotter will be very useful.

This is the second knotter we bought. Mike first found one online at an auction house on the East Coast. It was listed as "in good working order" with several photos, which showed a not-too-worn unit with an intact leather handle, a minimum of gunk and lint in the inner workings, and a clearly visible serial number. When it arrived, we realized immediately that the unit sent was not the unit shown, primarily because the serial number wasn't the same. Also, it wasn't "in good working order" and in fact, could not have operated correctly because either it had been taken apart and reassembled incorrectly, or parts were bent so they wouldn't move properly. Not only that, the leather handle was not intact and the remainder was very worn. So back it went, with a grumpy note about false advertising.

The second knotter Mike found on eBay, for a lot less money than the first one. When this one arrived, all it took was one click of the trigger to know it had a MUCH better chance of working than the first one. And in fact, after a few tests to determine which way the yarns should be laid into the works, it made knots and trimmed the tag ends to a half-inch on every attempt, with several different weights of yarn. Hooray!