15 dent on Schacht’s Rigid Heddle

When I was shopping for a rigid heddle loom back in 2021, I didn’t know Schacht’s narrowest reed size was a 12 dent while Ashford’s narrowest reed was 15 dent. I ended up with a Schacht because I liked how their products felt. The heavier wood seemed sturdier than Ashford.

Only after my purchase did I notice that many rigid heddle patterns call for a 15 dent reed. I felt like I was missing out, especially because I preferred to weave with finer yarns.

Schacht came out with a 15 dent reed last year. I can finally weave 15 ends per inch after several years of rigid heddle weaving. I assume it took a lot of time to figure out how to get the plastic thin and sturdy enough to fit the heddles so close together. Each reed comes with its own heddle hook designed to be thin enough to work with this reed.

I tried out the 15 dent reed with hand dyed logwood in Maurice Brassard 8/2 cottolin.

I made a small runner to test out an ikat pattern. The weave was compact and not gauzy at all. The selvedges did draw in when I was weaving. After washing it came out to 18 ends per inch.

I wouldn’t have a problem with this fabric for a towel. Perhaps because the runner was so narrow (9 1/2” wide) the yarns were easier to scrunch up with a bit of draw in. I don’t know exactly why but it came out denser than my following project, check towels.

I tried out the new reed with Maurice Brassard 8/2 cottonlin in Blanchi and Maurice Brassard 8/2 cotton in Rouge vin.

It is a loose weave, slightly gauzy, it can pass for a kitchen towel but I don’t think it would last as long as a slightly denser woven fabric. It is just a tad bit too loose. The towels came out to 15 ends per inch after washing and ironing.

I had less draw in when I was weaving these towels and also I decided to cut the yarn anytime there was a color change. The ends of the yarn are overlapped on both sides of the towel, so the middle of the towel has less rows of yarns. Perhaps that also contributes to a looser weaving?

The suggested ends per inch for 8/2 yarn is 20-30 so it makes sense how 15 epi feels too loose.

However, it still works as a kitchen towel.

When I first started weaving, I thought you could only weave with yarn that had the ‘correct’ epi. I would have wove more if I didn’t get so hung up on that fact.

You can weave with any yarn you want. The fabric might not be what you expect, might be gauzy or too dense. If I could go back in time to save me stress, I would tell myself to use whatever yarn I wanted and to start weaving instead of fretting about whether the yarn was ‘correct’ or not.

Getting into weaving is difficult. As a beginner, there is not much information to help me understand what kind of fabric will come out based on ends per inch unless I weave it myself. There’s a lot of dimension to fabric and yarn that makes it hard to describe from just reading about it.