DIY Inkle Loom From IKEA Parts

This project shows you how to build an inkle loom for band weaving. It can also be used with tablets. The model shown is for right-handed weaving, but you can also make it left-handed by reversing the instructions.

It uses several small IKEA products plus assorted hardware. If you have all the tools, you can build it for under €10/$10/£10.

(Cat instructions not included.)

If you want to make a smaller loom from IKEA parts, try my DIY Weaving Loom From IKEA BEKVÄM Spice Rack Instructable

Materials

1. IKEA BEKVÄM spice rack
2. IKEA OSTBIT plate holder
3. IKEA SKOGSVIKEN toilet roll holder

Hardware

1. Wood screws:
2. 2 wood screws shorter than 15 mm long, with a head diameter at least 7 mm wide. These will be used to fit the toilet roll holder foot.
3. 2 wood screws at least 20 mm long. These will be used to connect the spice rack base plate to the plate holder.
4. 1 wood screw at least 60 mm long, with an unthreaded shank of at least 15 mm (see picture for what an unthreaded shank is.) This will be used to connect the paddle to the loom.
5. Bolts:
6. 3 bolts, 5 - 6 mm in diameter, at least 30 mm long
7. 1 bolt, 5 - 6 mm in diameter, at least 40 mm long
8. Nuts and washers:
9. 1 split lock washer that fits on the long screw
10. 4 lock nuts to fit the bolts
11. (Included in the BEKVÄM packaging: four screws and a hex key. Use two of them to connect the spice rack block foot to the loom.)

Tools

1. Wood glue
2. Ruler, square, pencil
3. Small hacksaw
4. Hammer
5. Screwdrivers and wrenches that fit your screws, nuts, and bolts
6. Craft knife
7. Sandpaper or steel wool
8. Power drill with the following wood bits:
9. 3 mm
10. 9 mm
11. Appropriate for your wood screws
12. Appropriate for your bolts

Optional:

1. 10 x 10 mm round plumbing gaskets
2. Wood stain
3. Cat

Please use appropriate safety equipment!

These instructions use consistent terms for the parts you're working with. If you're in doubt, come back to this section and double-check before doing anything you can't undo.

You have three IKEA purchases here:

1. A BEKVÄM spice rack (at the bottom of the image). It has the following parts:
2. A base plate: the big piece of wood
3. A bar: the long skinny piece of wood
4. Two blocks: the rectangular pieces of wood with metal insets
5. Four BEKVÄM screws and a hex key for them (hardware you don't have to buy!)
6. An OSTBIT plate holder. It has:
7. A frame
8. 14 pegs
9. A SKOGSVIKEN toilet roll holder

You're going to be happier with this loom if it's smooth. Take a couple of minutes to sand all of the surfaces on all of the pieces of the spice rack. The plate rack is made of bamboo and doesn't need to be smoothed down.

If you're in the mood to stain the plate rack, do it now.

It's time to cut two specific pegs off of the plate rack and put them into the spice rack base plate. These pegs create the warp path for the final loom.

1. Cut the pegs flush with the plate rack frame and sand their places on the frame:
2. The second peg from the top on the left-hand side
3. The fifth peg from the top on the right-hand side
4. Lay the spice rack base plate horizontally and measure for holes near the short edge on the left side. Both holes should be 20 mm (2 cm) from the edge:
5. 15 mm (1.5 cm) from the top
6. 30 mm (3 cm) from the bottom
7. Drill 9 mm holes as vertically as possible where you've marked. To prevent the board from splitting, drill slowly.
8. Smear some glue around the cut ends of each of the pegs you removed.
9. Fit them into the holes, pounding them in with the hammer as needed. Drive them in until the cut ends are flush with the back of the base plate.

The next step is to put the big pieces of the loom together. This joint is more about position than strength. You'll connect the two pieces more firmly in the next step.

1. Lay the two pieces together so you're drilling into the right bits. You should be connecting:
2. The short end of the spice rack base plate that does not have new pegs in it
3. The bottom of the long side of the plate holder frame that has a the second (not third) hole from the top missing.
4. Mark the plate holder frame on the outside (the bit that will be next to the spice rack base plate). The marks should be 10 mm (1 cm) and 90 mm (9 cm) from the end of the frame and in the middle of the frame width.
5. Drill the holes using the bit for the 20 mm wood screws.
6. Line the spice rack base plate up with the plate holder frame. Slip a nail into the holes to mark the drill points on the spice rack base plate.
7. Drill the spice rack base plate in the markings.
8. Screw the plate holder to the spice rack base plate.

The joint will be terribly wobbly! This is why you'll be bracing things.

Use the spice rack bar to brace the frame front and back. Because the bar can split easily, drill slowly and carefully. You'll also drill some holes before you cut the bar into two pieces. If it splits anyway, you can use a staple gun staple across the gap to hold it together. (It's not pretty, but it works.)

All of the drilling here should use the bit that fits your bolts.

1. If your bolts don't fit through the pre-drilled holes in the spice rack base, drill out the top one next to the plate holder. It's going to hold an important bolt.

Prep the bar

1. The bar has a narrowed part on each end. Cut them off. If you want to be fancy, glue the cut-off bits in the oval holes of the spice rack blocks and sand them down.
2. Mark the bar 17 cm from one end. (This is not the middle.)
3. Mark holes on either side of the line. On the short end (the 17 cm one), mark 7 mm (0.7 cm) from the line. On the other end, mark 10 mm (1 cm) from the line.
4. Using the drill bit that fits your bolts, drill the marked holes. To prevent the bar from splitting, drill slowly.
5. Cut along the marked line. Sand the cut edges.

Prep the plate holder frame

Drill two holes on the upright of the frame that's farther away from the spice rack base plate.

1. Drill one hole 8 cm from the bottom of the plate holder frame, off-center so it's closer to the rest of the loom. This is part of fitting the bar so that it doesn't get in the way of the warp threads.
2. Drill another hole 8 cm from the top of the plate holder frame. This can be on-center.

Make the back brace

Turn the longer part of the spice rack bar into the back brace. (See the pictures for which brace this is.)

1. Use a bolt through the upper hole to loosely fasten the longer part of the spice rack bar to the back of the loom.
2. Swing the bar until it's behind the upper pre-drilled hole in the spice rack base. Slip a nail in the hole and mark the bar.
3. Holding the bar in place, mark where its top corner sticks out.
4. Take the back brace off and drill a hole where you marked. To prevent the board from splitting, drill slowly.
5. Trim the marked corner and sand it smooth.

Don't put the brace back on yet.

Make the front brace

Make the front horizontal brace from the shorter part of the back brace. This has to be carefully placed so that the warp threads have room to pass its end.

1. Use a bolt through the lower hole to loosely fasten the shorter part of the spice rack bar to the front of the plate holder.
2. Swing the bar until it's in front of the upper pre-drilled hole in the spice rack base. Slip a nail in the hole and mark the bar.
3. Use a piece of string to check that the warp thread can pass the end of the bar in a straight line. If not, trim the bar more until it can.
4. Take the front brace off and drill a hole where you marked. To prevent the board from splitting, drill slowly.

Install both braces

1. Install the braces, using the shorter bolts for the holes through the plate stand frame.
2. Use the long bolt to get through the two bars at the pre-drilled hole in the spice rack base.
3. Drill another hole through the front brace and spice rack base and use your last bolt in them.
4. Tighten the nuts.

The loom should be much more stable now.

It's often useful for a loom to be able to stand up (or maybe that's just me). Time to make that happen.

Install the toilet roll holder foot

This goes on the end of the loom away from the plate holder.

1. Line up the end of the toilet roll holder to the edge of the loom with the two pegs you installed earlier. Make sure it's even with the bottom of the loom so it stands up nicely.
2. Mark each of the gaps in the toilet roll holder.
3. Drill with the appropriate drill bit. Don't drill all the way through the wood.
4. Screw the toilet roll holder onto the loom.

Install the spice rack block foot

This goes near the plate holder, but not so close that it's hard to thread the loom. For this foot, you can use the BEKVÄM screws (the screws that came with the spice rack).

1. Mark the spice rack base plate 5 mm from the bottom in two places, measured from where the base plate meets the plate rack. (See picture).
2. 4 cm
3. 10 cm
4. Use the 3 mm bit to drill through the spice rack base plate. Try to keep the drill perpendicular to the base plate.
5. One side of the spice rack block has two holes drilled in it. These should fit the holes through the base plate. Use the BEKVÄM screws to fasten the foot on.

Inkle looms need a tensioning device to deal with the fact that woven material is shorter than unwoven warp threads. In this case, it's a paddle made out of the other spice rack block.

There's a risk that warp threads can slip between the paddle and the loom. To avoid that happening, you have to carve the paddle a little before installing it.

Carving the paddle

The goal is to gently round the corners of the paddle except for the part closest to the loom. (See the picture.)

1. Take the metal plate off of the paddle. The side that used to have that plate will go up against the loom.
2. Mark a line 5 mm from that edge all the way around the block.
3. Mark lines 2 mm from the long edges of the paddle.
4. Using a sharp knife, cut into the corners where the curved parts should stop (5 mm from the edge that will go against the loom.)
5. Carve the corners of the long edges up to, but not beyond, that mark.
6. Sand the carved paddle smooth.

Mounting the paddle

Look at the end of the paddle that will go against the loom. Note how the holes are not symmetrical. You want the paddle to pivot on the hold that's closest to an edge to give it more swing.

1. Mark a spot on the loom that is 6 cm away from the edge of the toilet roll holder foot and 5.5 cm away from the top of the spice rack base board.
2. Drill slowly through that hole with the bit that fits your long screw.
3. Test whether your long screw fits into the pre-drilled hole in the paddle. if not, widen it with your drill. Don't drill all the way to the length of the screw. You want some real bite here.
4. Put the lock washer on the screw and screw it into the spice rack base plate from the back. Screw it tight! The goal is to pull it as tightly against the loom as possible (to reduce the chance of anything slipping into the gap) and rely on the unthreaded part of the screw to rotate the paddle.

You're now done with the loom. Congratulations!

I am not an expert on using an inkle loom, so I'm not including instructions on how to thread or use it. (Though you can see from pictures how I thread it.) However, I do have two useful tips:

1. You can adjust the tension of the thread by turning the paddle. Note that because the pegs on this loom are quite thin, it may not take a lot of tension in the long term. Be mindful!
2. One way to reduce tension on the pegs is to ensure that the warp thread stays as close to the loom as possible. You can see how I've used plumbing gaskets to keep the thread from drifting.

Happy weaving!