Ask Madelyn: Sleying the Reed for Specific Setts

I’m wondering what I should do to sley a 10-dent or 12-dent reed to get a sett of 16 ends per inch. Thanks, – Larry

Hi Larry!

The overall goal in sleying a reed with more than one end in a dent to achieve a particular sett is to make the sleying order as even overall as possible. If you sley one dent with 4 ends, say, and the adjacent dent with 1 end, the 4 ends are likely to show as stripes of grouped threads in the final cloth. To achieve 16 ends per inch with a 12-dent reed, think of it this way: 1/ dent in a 12 dent reed = 12 ends per inch. To sley the remaining 4 ends as evenly as possible in that same inch, sley 1 of them in every third dent. The sleying order of the 16 threads would therefore be 2-1-1 four times in each inch.

To sley a 10 dent reed to achieve 16 ends per inch is a little trickier. If I sley 1 end per dent to get 10 ends per inch, I have 6 ends remaining. I can sley 2 ends in every other dent for 15, but I still have one more end to sley. I would probably sley: 2-1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2-2.

If you are choosing between the 10-dent and 12-dent reeds, I’d choose the 12-dent for a more regular sleying order (even though I think the extra 2 ends at the end of every inch would probably not show—or show much—in the final cloth). Note that many weaving books include reed charts in which sleying orders are given for all setts between 2 and 120 ends per inch using reeds of between 5 and 24 dents per inch. Reed charts give sleying orders for setts that don’t repeat evenly within a single inch, however, so it would not include 16 ends in a 10-dent reed.

—Madelyn

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