A while back I found an adjustable knitting board at the thrift store and immediately saw its potential to be made into a weaving loom. I've wanted to get back into weaving for quite some time. I have a full-size, four-heddle floor loom at my parents house, but I've never had a place to put it in any of our apartments. So, you can imagine how excited I was to make a loom that was both simple and portable. Since our table saw is in storage at my sister-in-law's house, a couple months passed before I was able to move forward with the idea. Finally, over the first couple weeks of January, we (my husband helped, of course) were able to put it together. Here are a few pictures showing how we did it.
I decided to make my frame loom a little over two feet tall, so I bought 4 1/2 feet of 1 x 2 lumber (at about 60 cents a foot). The great thing is that you can always make more sides of different lengths depending on your project. After taking apart the knitting board, which was held together with wing nuts and bolts, I marked where the new holes were to be drilled at the front, taking into account the width of the wing nuts.
The new construction method required four sets of bolts and wing nuts, so more had to be purchased. The hardware that came with the knitting board was metric, so I opted for buying all new standard 1/4 - 20 pieces rather than pay the exorbitant price for matching metric hardware.
Using a table saw, my husband cut the wood to size. Then, using the same table saw adjusted so that the blade was only 1/2" above the table level, he made many side-by-side cuts to create a channel the same width as the knitting board pieces. A router would have been way easier and more precise, but, use what you got, right? Once the sides were cut and channeled, I used the holes I drilled in the knitting as a guide for drilling the matching holes in the side pieces. The corresponding holes are labelled to make it easier to put together. To assemble it all, I laid out the side pieces, stacked the knitting board pieces in the channels with their corresponding letters, and bolted it all together.
Now I can warp my frame loom...as soon as I have a spare few minutes...