The Mighty Wolf is a wide version of Schacht’s hugely popular Baby Wolf. It’s a 36-inch 8-shaft jack loom that can fold away like the Lillstina when not in use. This one initially came with a “Combby” computer dobby mechanism that had stopped working.
Fixing a couple of broken wires got the mechanism working… sort-of, but it still occasionally dropped a shaft or (worse!) skipped a whole pick…
I guess I wasn’t the only one struggling with the Combby’s reliability… Schacht themselves discontinued support for it around 2003.
After many tweaks and twiddles, and a couple of ruined pieces, patience ran out. I binned the computer stuff, imported some new parts , and converted the loom back to its original form.
Result! A very sweet 8-shaft, 10-treadle manual floor loom that kept good tension and was a joy to use. The jack mechanism was great for weaving more complex stuff like the 2-block double weave shown here.
Around this time, I joined a summer school at Heriot Watt in Galashiels… weaver heaven is a week in a workshop full of yarn and multi-shaft looms! Day-dreams about a loom with more shafts came true, and I eventually sold the Mighty Wolf to a keen weaver from Killin.
