A visit to DC Dalgliesh

[Alan H]

One thing that I learned from this visit is why a custom order costs so much. Order 10 yards, order 50 yards, the labor to do it all is almost identical.

The threads must be pulled off of the big spools that come from the dying company and spooled onto the cones used for thread distribution. If your tartan is single width and has eight colors of thread, and the sett repeats four times with each thread being repeated 3x in the sett (extremely unlikely, but it'll do for the example), then thats 4 x 8 x 3 = 96 cones which must be laid out on the rack, pulled over the wheel onto the cassette to form the warp. In fact, it's a lot more than 96, so my example is lousy!..... but you get the idea. If each of those cones has 10 yards of thread on it, or 50 yards of thread on it, the labour is the same.

Now the cassette is moved over to the loom. It doesn't matter if there's 10 yards or 50 yards of cloth on it. The threads from your orders warp are tied on to the threads from the last bit of the last orders warp, so that the loom doesn't have to be completely re-threaded. Well...what difference does it make if there's 10 yards or 50 yards of thread "behind" the knots that get tied?

The cassette is set up on the loom and the shuttles are threaded with the eight colors of your tartan and the shuttles loaded into the shuttle cassette. Those little steel oblongs that determine which shuttle shoots across to form the weft is set up the same, whether there is 10 years of cloth or 50. The only labor difference at this stage between 10 yards and 50 yards will be that the shuttles will need to be changed out a couple of times for fresh ones, with more thread on them for the 50 yard order.

Once everything is loaded up, the electricity is turned on and the loom begins working. After 5-10 minutes, the attendant walks away and takes care of other things around the mill while the loom does its business. If the loom runs for three hours or thirty hours, what's the difference? It's just a bit more electricity.

Once the cloth comes off the loom, that's not the end of the process, there's more work that needs done, but this is most of it.

I hope this makes sense! Upshot is that the amount of labor needed to weave 10 yards of cloth is almost the same as the amount of labor needed to weave 50 yards. More thread is needed of course, but in the overall scheme of things, it's the labor that's the big expense.