Introduction:
The reason this is not a good device for warp yarns is because the upper and lower yarns will be of different tensions when they leave the doubling stand. This isn’t a problem with weft yarns.
Have you ever wanted to combine two or more yarns as one weft? Have you discovered it doesn’t work very well because, no matter what you’ve tried, one yarn always loops up so they don’t lie flat together in the shed? The answer is: use a doubling stand to double up weft yarns so they come out of the shuttle together and evenly.
Doubling stands can be homemade or purchased. The photo shows a commercially made stand. (Note the optional tension box for winding tight weft packages.) Notice how the yarn from the cone is circling around another yarn coming up through a tube in the center of the cone.
Tension boxes can look very different from one another, but they all have a series of dowels—sometimes 3 and sometimes more—over and under which you thread the yarn. This threading puts drag (tension) on the yarn.
If you don’t have a tension box, you can use your warping board, a spindle-backed chair, or the posts of the lazy Kate located on your spinning wheel. What you need is a series of dowels or pegs that the thread can alternately go over and under to put tension or drag on the weft as you wind.
One or more yarns are put on vertical posts with the yarn guided exactly up from the centers of the posts. Above these yarns is a single cone or spool of yarn supported by a vertical tube instead of a post. The yarns below are guided up through their respective thread guides and then up through the tube and the center of the extra cone. Then, the lower yarns plus the upper one are taken together up through a guide above the center of the top cone. You can see what happens: the yarn from the upper cone encircles the yarns coming up through its center. This encirclement keeps all the yarns together without any of them looping up during weaving. To guide the bottom threads up through the cone on top, fashion a long hook from a coat hanger or use a long heddle.
Three keys to keep in mind when setting up a doubling “situation” or in making a homemade stand.
- The thread guide for the lower spools must be exactly over the center of the pins or dowels that hold the spools or cones.
- There must be enough space between the tops of all the packages and their thread guides to allow the yarn to whip off the packages freely.
- The top cone or spool must have a way for the lower yarns to pass up through its center.
A tube to hold the top cone is the hardest thing to find—try hobby shops or a good hardware store. There are many other ways to accomplish the job. I’ve seen one cone underneath an upside-down “milk crate” with another cone sitting to top and the thread from below coming up a hole in the crate and through the top cone. There are many ways you might make (or rig) a doubling “stand” yourself.