Six months since my last blog update, sorry for taking so long life sometimes takes interesting turns. I’m a member of a reenactment group and every year we have a arts and sciences showcase. It’s not a competition as there is no winner, just a bunch of us showing off our current project and what we’ve learned. This year I wanted to explore tension in loop manipulation braids. How does the different beating methods effect tension and as a result the evenness of the braid? Does mixing the two change the tension and evenness? Does adding Japanese kute with leaders affect tension and evenness?
To compare these variables, I’ll be using the same pattern with three materials silk/bamboo yarn, DMC embroidery floss, and 30/2 silk across three beating methods hand spreading, sword beating, and a mix of the two holding directly onto the loops. I’ll also repeat all nine braids using kute with leaders for a total of eighteen braids. In an effort to reduce the amount of variable that my technique would introduce, I’ve been making some practice braids, so far, the silk/bamboo yarn and the embroidery floss. I created an angle guide to ensure that my hands spread out to the same angle every time. So far, the angle guide has been extremely helpful and has contributed the most to make sure my tension is even.
A few things that have I’ve noticed since starting the practice braiding, the ideal angle for hand spreading is between 120-150° in a sitting position and 150-170° in a standing position if using a pre-marked angle guide. The difference of angles is due to parallax between the sitting and standing positions. In the standing position the 150° angle is the same as the sitting 120° angle and that a sitting 150° angle is at the limit of hand spreading from needing to ease off pulling the braid to ensure an even width and pattern length. Which leads me to the next item, the rapid tightening near the end of the braid something that most braiders counter by pulling less and less towards themselves. As braiders ease off pulling, the 150° angle spread causes the braid to droop more and more until the braid is just barely staying up leading to too much tension ease, lengthening the pattern length, and making the braid less even.
With the combination of an angle guide and balancing easing off the pulling, I’ve been able to get consistent braids that are within 1/32 in variance along the braid and 1/16 in original widths and pattern length between braids. But the thing that I was not able to fix was the rapid tightening at the end of the braid. I was able to reduce the length of that rapid tightening to within the last ½ in of the braid and gradual tightening in the last 1 ½ in. This lead me to wonder what the difference was and why even with practice and guides I could not eliminate the rapid tightening. My observation was that the braid width was primarily affected by the angle spread and that the pattern length was primarily affected by how hard the braider pulled and their evenness of easing off that as the braid got longer. I say primarily as the width and pattern length were still influenced by the other factor, requiring a balance between and consistency of the angle spread and pulling.
Something I noticed as I get to the end of a braid is that the loop becomes wider till the upper and lower shanks approach 90° at the fell of the braid compared to 1-10° at fell when starting a new braid. With the angle spread the larger the angle, the tighter the width becomes and the more pull used the tighter the pattern length gets. The variable with the loop getting wider is how much it increases in a short distance at the end of the braid. As the braid fell moves closer to the end of the loops, initially the change in the loop angle is slow and small but grows exponentially near the end of the braid. This lead me to think what if we lengthened the braid, but this doesn’t solve the problem. Well, I’ve been mulling the idea of leaders in Japanese kute-uchi for some time and have found it quite useful in several aspects of braiding so far, proper placement of the fell for sword beating and saving yards of silk or other materials per braid. What if I made kute with leaders for both hand and finger looping? The length of the leader would allow for a consistent low angle at the end of the braid eliminating the rapid tightening and allow for a longer usable braid.
With this last piece of influence on the tension and evenness of a braid, I’ve realized there are three distinct balanced and in unison forces that determine the overall tension and evenness of a braid. From that I wanted to come up with a way to help explain these forces and what to call them. The angle spread and pulling were easy, they are perpendicular to each other, but where doe the loop widening fit in. The loop widening is perpendicular to both, making an x,y,z axis. To distinguish the different tension factions from each other, I’ve taken to calling them angle tension, pull tension, and loop tension. Though the angle tension and pull tension affect the entire length of the braid, the loop tension determines how that braid ends. Things that can be done to develop consistency is using an angle guide and leaders. The pull tension is a little harder to quantify without a force meter, so it will be subjective and determined by the braider’s experience.
As I finish more practice braids and the final braids, I'll post more.