A visit to DC Dalgliesh

[Alan H]

You're welcome, gents. I knew a lot of you lads would love to see this!

craigdubh, the odds are good that the woman in the pictures is the actual lass who will lay out the warp threads, draw them on the cassette, and thread the loom for your order. There are 3-4 employees at the mill, but I believe she is the most experienced.

There is actually an even older way of aligning theads for the warp...old and simple, with just a wooden framework and dowels. They still have that setup, there at DC Dalgliesh, and I saw the same setup at Knockando, where it's used for blankets and plain-weave cloth. It won't do for production of large quantities of tartan cloth, but it can still be done for shorter runs. I believe that they'll use the racks and wheels and the single-width cassette for all the runs nowadays, though, and personally I'd prefer it that way as it's almost certainly more accurate.

[creagdhubh]

You're welcome, gents. I knew a lot of you lads would love to see this!

craigdubh, the odds are good that the woman in the pictures is the actual lass who will lay out the warp threads, draw them on the cassette, and thread the loom for your order. There are 3-4 employees at the mill, but I believe she is the most experienced.

There is actually an even older way of aligning theads for the warp...old and simple, with just a wooden framework and dowels. They still have that setup, there at DC Dalgliesh, and I saw the same setup at Knockando, where it's used for blankets and plain-weave cloth. It won't do for production of large quantities of tartan cloth, but it can still be done for shorter runs. I believe that they'll use the racks and wheels and the single-width cassette for all the runs nowadays, though, and personally I'd prefer it that way as it's almost certainly more accurate.

Wow! That is wonderful!

[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.

[cessna152towser]

Excellent pics Alan.
You are indeed very privileged to be given a tour of DC Dalgliesh.

[artificer]

Brilliant photo-tour, Alan! Thank you.

ith:

[Downunder Kilt]

Thank you Alan. Having a number of custom weave tartans from D. C Dalgliesh, I am most interested in your photos and narrative of your visit. Cheers

[Spartan Tartan]

Fantastic pictures, Alan! I have 3 kilts made from that custom weave mill. Very interesting to see the shop and imagine the layout of what my kilts would have "looked like" as they were being woven.

[McMurdo]

Alan
Wow what a great thread and a real treat to see the loom that my Royal Naval Association tartan came off of. Thank you for sharing this behind the scenes look of the place again its a real treat.

[unixken]

As with some other respondents on this thread, I too have been fortunate enough to own a kilt (or three) made by Dalgliesh's single-width loom. The photos are excellent, Alan! Thanks for sharing them!

Incidentally, the lovely woman in the photos is Crena Bell, who also appears in this news story about Scotweb's rescue of the mill a few years ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWa1KJzweqM