Kevin Olson

I also wanted to thank the OP for the intro to a Speedweve mending loom.  I'd had no prior acquaintance.  Where was one of these things when I was a kid and my mother was teaching me to mend and darn?  I mostly had a burned out light bulb, over which to work.  Just having the rubber band clamping do-hickey to keep the fabric taut and flat would have been a godsend!

Now, the engineer in me is contemplating how to make a version a bit more like a rigid heddle loom, which would more easily allow warp manipulation for weaves other than straight tabby weaves.  Maybe two or more lengths of hooks?  I guess there are always lease sticks.  Maybe there's a version of Matteo Salusso's tubular rigid heddle which would work, or one of the sort having a square cross-section bar heddle and kerfed slots for the warps on alternating diagonals of the section.  I don't recall the name of the second sort (old age creeping up?), but rotating the heddle back and forth by 90 degrees alternately raises and lowers the warps to for sheds.

On edit: maybe this is just a "heddle bar".  A good write-up on making a wooden one can be found here:
https://blog.vintagetoolpatch.com/2025/05/25/loom-heddle.html

Whether that makes any sense for a darning loom, that's another question entirely!

Another rabbit hole, down which to fall!

Carla Burke wrote:Nicely done, Kevin!

Thanks for your vote of confidence!

If nothing else, it did provide a good break between snow scooping, roof shoveling and ice dam chipping spells on Saturday (a change is as good as a rest), and kept me sociably awake yesterday evening after a long day of physical labor.

I did try a couple of other approaches to this mending job, including half-hitching each pair of warp strands to its neighboring strands (using a latch hook - not very secure, and left a fringe) in sequence, and square knotting adjacent warp strands together to secure the weft (which would have left a fringe - also using the latch hook, because the strands were too short to use fingers), but I eventually settled on this approach.  I think it will be more secure in the long run, a bit tidier and more workman like, and there was enough looseness in the weave to facilitate it.

I don't know if I'll try to use my old Standard Rotary sewing machine (usually reserved for abusive jobs like mending backpacking tents, backpacks and work pants), or if I'll try to use a Speedy Stitcher (a lock stitch sewing awl - usually used for mending boots, heavy tarps or tents, and the like) when I turn the edge.  Double needle by hand is another possibility, since the pack of Boye yarn needles I had laying around have a pair of each size of needle.  I don't think I have a ball ended needle for either the sewing machine or the Speedy Stitchers (I have a dueling brace, one bought new, the other found cheaply at a used tool store).  So, maybe the double needle technique will be best.

Whichever method I choose, I'll post a follow-up.  Not that what I do is the very paragon of virtue (as I said, I'm not a fiber arts guy), but it may  - at the very least - give someone else an idea of what they don't wish to do!

This seems like the right place for this little foray into mending - definitely a "not clothes" mending project.

One of our cotton bathroom rugs (probably from Walmart or Target or some other price-conscious outlet) had begun to fray badly on the end.  This is because:  the warps were simply cut (but not worked in); after which, the end was turned under and sewn, with a single run of lock stitch.  Not so robust, even if these rugs only get shaken out and washed (air dried), but never vacuumed with the carpet attachment.

So, I worked the (doubled) warp strands back in, under 5 weft shots.  I pulled the half of them that would have been on the "right" or show side to the back.  I plan to turn the end and stitch it down to contain the warp ends.

As you can probably see, the ends were too short to thread before passing the yarn needle under the wefts, so I had to fish the needle part way through, then thread the warps through the eye.  I used a bared "twistie" wire (bread bag twist) to make a needle threader to get the warp yarns through the eye (barely discernible in a couple of the pics).  For those warps which were on the right side, I had to repeat the process of post-threading the needle to pull them through to the back.

It's not yet turned and stitched, and I may need to do something with the selvedge warps, but I did mock up the finished product by "pinning" it with the yarn needle as a quick test, and I think I can manage the loose ends.  But that will need to wait for another day, since it's half past 11 and I spent a good bit of the day cleaning snow off roofs, some am fairly well tuckered out.  I think it's OK to use in the AM.

I'm not a fiber arts guy, per se, but needs must!

Be aware, there are a couple of pages missing from the scan (there's only one page between numbered pages 90 and 94, but I can't tell which 2 page numbers are AWOL).  I would assume this was merely an oversight (stuck together pages or whatever) when the scan was made and the PDF compiled.

If ever I come across a paper copy, I'll scan the pages which are MIA and post them.  They may be relevant to the "Modifications" section (which includes cook stoves), but I infer that they may more likely pertain to installation, including (I would imagine) things like structural support and setbacks.  Since these details are likely to be generally relevant, irrespective of what sort of masonry heater one constructs, I think the missing pages should be publicly available.  I thought I'd found a copy at a reasonable price on Amazon, but the sale was cancelled after the transaction was completed, so I assume either someone beat me to the punch on another sale platform (or bricks-n-mortar) or someone's inventory system showed a non-existent book.  Either way, I'll keep looking.  I'm old fashioned, but I really do prefer a dead trees book to the digital sort.  Unfortunately, it seems that the preponderance of stuff I am looking for is only available digitally.

I guess could also ping Michele (Albie's partner) from his website and ask her.  She may be able to help with the missing pages.  Maybe I'll do that, and post up any positive updates.

OK, back to snow removal and roof clearing (we are on pace for a record year, here)...

For any who are interested, a PDF of "Finnish Fireplaces" by Heikki Hyytiainen and Albie Barden (with translation by Aila Rapeli) is available for free download from Albie Barden's (of Maine Wood Heat) blog site:
https://www.albiebarden.com/albie-bardens-blog


This book has been long out of print and has had very limited availability on the used market from the usual suspects.

"Finnish Fireplaces" is a survey of historic and modern (as of the 1980s, that is!) Finnish masonry heaters, most of which feature some form of fireplace, whether open or with operable doors.  Some are of the contraflow design, others merely having smoke chambers (and heat accumulators) above the fireboxes.  Some designs shown also offer black ovens or cook tops, and a couple of cook stove designs are reminiscent of the Cabin Stove from Firespeaking or Matt Walker's cook stoves.

Even if you are sold on the rockety type of masonry stoves, this is a good reference (though I am still nosing through it, so may be offering a hasty endorsement).

Many thanks to Albie for making this difficult-to-find reference available!

There is a book - "God Speed the Plow", perhaps? something like that - which has some interesting information on this line of inquiry.

The cable plowing rigs - Fowler was a well known brand - was a short lived sideline in this story which allowed very heavy steam engines to till smaller fields.  The "balance plows" used for this had a set of shares for each direction, and were steerable.  The nearest application of something like this I've seen in modern times is the use of winch tractors in steep slope viticulture operations.  The tractor can inch along the top of the vineyard from one row to the next (which run up-and-down the slope), then winch up the harvest.  As the old saw goes "vines love the hills".

The nearly ubiquitous (in Europe) two-wheeled tractors are a fascinating solution for small, mixed agriculture operations.  American brands such as Gravely, Bolens and Simplicity were pretty common, especially in the post WWII boom, with marketing targeted at "sundown farmers", but the real workhorses were and still are the European makes: Aebi, Holder, Pasquali, Ferrari, Carraro, Grillo and of course BCS.  And a bunch of others I can't remember at the moment.

I had a David Bradley two-wheeled walking tractor with several implements, but sold it to someone with small acreage, to which it was better suited.  More than once, I've kicked myself that I didn't hang on to it, but I'm sure they put it to better use than I would have done in these intervening years.  I do still have an Ariens Model B, in need of some love, with which I may eventually get around to doing something.

I've occasionally seen a BCS with a blown engine on FB Marketplace or CL.  Once, there was one with a "Chonda" (Chinese Honda replica) repower, quite reasonably priced.  But, I don't really need one at the moment.  Or maybe ever.  Even if I do acquire small ag acreage.  But, they are pretty slick.

I have kicked around using old gear drive Cub Cadet parts to cobble up a version of these walking tractors.  I think it would be possible, with some fabrication and machining, to make a reasonable facsimile of these European Lego system tractors, including driven axle trailers for firewood fetching and the like.  But, like a lot of my projects, this one is in the "not yet started" category!

All that being said, the Amish seem to do a lot better financially than most farmers who aren't doing "big ag".  So, for conventional - if antiquated - farming, meat power still seems to be very viable.  And, for a garden, even a big garden, the amount of mechanization actually needed, once established, seems to drop precipitously for someone of sound body.

William Bronson wrote:Kevin, I love those stoves!
Home heating that produces charcoal is my jam!
This video introduced me to the product:

Yes, this one "set the hook" for me, but what "reeled me in" was his conversion of a wood burning cook stove to a pellet gasifier:



There are a zillion old cook stoves around my neck of the woods.  Conversion to a cleaner and more efficient combustion method seems worthwhile, if only from the vantage of reduction of fire hazard.

I don't know that Alex's thermal mass heaters are really intended to produce charcoal.  But, since both the primary and secondary draft controls are within the operator's purview (throttle and mixture), tailoring combustion toward residual charcoal should be possible.

It might be possible to construct a 5-channel contraflow insert to fit in the available space.  This sounds like a very tricky proposition, however.

I am currently working through Axel Berberich's online course/tutorial (offered through Bosco di Ogigia) on building a pyrolyzing gasifier stove, using homemade precast refractory parts (and some metal bits, too).  My primary interest in his course is that he discusses somewhat peripherally the conversion of wood cook stoves to gasifier burners.  Old wood burning cook stoves in serviceable (if not pristine) condition are typically available in my area for between 100 and 200 USD, but sometimes can be had free for the hauling (I got a kitchen end heater that way - rolled it away on an appliance dolly!).  Anyway, I would suspect that you could, with care, make up molds for pieces to fit up into the existing fireplace's firebox and smoke chamber to define the contraflow channels.  Axel recommends a mix of high alumina refractory cement and vermiculite for the precast pieces.  One time molds might be made from scraps of wood, sheet metal flashing, cardboard mailing tubes or sonotubes, etc.   He glues the pieces together with a mix of fire clay and sand, similar to how most thermal mass heaters made from bricks are mortared together.  But, is all of this worth it?  I don't know.  It would be a reversible conversion, though, if done with care, so might do minimal if any violence to the architectural integrity of the house.

Another thought would be to make a firebox insert which converts it into more of a radiant fireplace, Rumford style.  That might be easier, and should get more heat out into the room.  There are lots of modern interpretations of Count Rumford's fireplace.  My recommendation is to chase down his book (I have found it on Archive,org in the past), give that a read, then see what some of the modern proponents have to say about it.  At least you'll understand the problem he was trying to solve (not so different from your inefficient fire place) and what he did to improve matters, and you can better assess the modern versions.  You could pre-cast some Rumfordizing parts, too, though fitting the traditional lintel and throat into the Kiva style fireplace might also be tricky.

Thanks for posting this.  I tried to grow early-planted winter Banatka wheat this year (Bonfils), but it failed to germinate - twice.  By reputation, Banatka should be prone to germinating in the head due to an inopportunely timed rain event, so I think this wheat is kaput.  I'll get another sample of heritage long straw wheat to try.  Barley, winter rye and buckwheat can all be grown where I am, as well as winter lentils.  All of which I hope to try within the next year or two.  A threshing machine will be indispensable when the project comes to (literal) fruition.

Thanks again.

Re lubrication of shafts: goose fat, bear grease, lard and bees wax would all be traditional lubricants, and probably beef or mutton tallow, too.  White tail deer fat is quite solid at room temp - high in stearine? - and might tend to stay put fairly well, too, though I've never tried it.  I don't know under what circumstances each of these should best be used, however.  But, I have successfully used bees wax for low speed bearing surfaces - wooden drawer slides, window sash, etc.

This video popped unbidden into my YT feed ("I'm the eye in the sky...I can read your mind"):

I might quibble with, or refine, a few of the details, but for a general overview of rubble trench foundations, it's pretty good.  She references other videos, including a wall structure video, which I'll now have to watch.  One thing leads to another...

She was apparently prompted to chase down these historic vernacular construction methods and details due to mold allergies in a too-tight and too-damp modern structure, if I understood correctly.