Thursday, November 13, 2008

Renovation of the quilter

Progress is being made on the quilter. I was mulling over the lack of ability to keep the quilt poles from moving freely on the quilter. This is a flaw in our design I discovered while working on the wonkey monkey quilt. I had to hold the finished quilt pole at times after it got heavy with quilted quilt.
I keep thinking on the way home from school about the different things I saw on line to keep the quilt tight on the various frames. Things that clicked and held, stopping the reverse movement. "Kinda like a ratchet." Click and hold, click and hold , like a ratchet... LIKE A RATCHET!!! Ratchets have a thingie on the back to switch from righty tighty to lefty loosey. That will allow one on the right end and one on the left end to click and hold in the same direction.
I came up with the idea of welding sockets to the poles. Then attaching the sockets to a ratchet on each end. The rachets will be secured to the sides of the quilter to keep them from moving. This would allow me to move the poles to advance the quilt, and prevent the poles from slipping backwards.
Master craftsman Buck agreed that the ratchets & welded sockets idea would work. He has to replace 2 poles because he can't weld the metal of the original set. Hey, I didn't know what could be welded or not. He is even donating 6 ratchets and 6 sockets to the cause.
We'll probably get the poles tomorrow afternoon, but work on the quilter Sunday. We are racing Saturday. Thank goodness we're taking the motorhome. I won't freeze.

No comments: