On making medieval weaving tablets

So this activity is based on a trick my friend S came up with: using material cut for a completely different use to quickly and easily produce something for your use. In this case: using thick veneer cut wood instead of splitting thin sheets off a proper chunk of wood.

But maybe I should start at the beginning, this feels like I'm in the middle at the moment.

This post is on making medieval weaving tablets. I wrote about tablet weaving in July. My most recent and favourite way to describe the craft of tablet weaving as follows: it's like weaving but instead of having one thread up and one thread down (so two in every repeat - assuming simple tabby weave) you have four threads in every repeat. And instead of just moving them up and down between every wheft, you twist them like for normal cordage. So your sequence basically is 'twist each group of four a bit, pass thread through, twist each group a bit further, pass thread through again' etc.

In order to have space to pass the thread through you space all four threads out a bit. And as you want all four at same distance you create a little square tablet with four holes for the four threads. Then, twisting the tablet twists the four threads and hey presto, you have a weaving setup.

Now historically, these weaving tablets would have been made of many materials: bone, horn, antler (different to horn) wood and even rawhide and thick leather. Some of these materials are a pain to work, wood, rawhide and leather are easiest to come by and to tool. Also, quite thin wooden tablets were found in the Oseberg burial from approx. 800 and I remember seeing somewhere that similar ones found in 12th century Poland, so I think we're probably ok on these.

The veneer I bought was from a shop that sells tools and materials for model-ship construction. It's a 1.5mm thick nut-wood veneer, though in future I think I prefer 2mm or even 2.5mm. I got several pieces, each sized 10cmx50cm.

First, I smootened all the sides of the veneer with several grits of sand paper.

Then I used a normal cutter knife and cutting mat to cut squares sized 4.5cm by 4.5cm. I will admit that 5cm by 5cm looks as though it'll work better, but I really enjoy the slightly smaller size and also it allows me to get two extra tablets out of the material. Then I ground down the new fresh edges with the sandpaper as before.

Next I picked up stacks of 10-15 tablets and placed some scrap material of the same type at the top and bottom. Then I carefully aligned them all (as a future note: some tape might help keep them aligned) and clamped them down tight to some other scrap material in order to drill all the way through.

Drilling was somewhat faffy. For each 10 tablets drilled I surely split about 2-3, no matter how careful I went. But I found no way to reduce the loss - probably this is easier with thicker material.

Finally I sanded the newly drilled holes, oiled the tablets and promptly warped a project.

Formalities:

• Material: Veneer, sand paper of different grit, oil
• Tools: drill, clamp, cutter, cutting mat
• Time: maybe about 20 minutes in total per tablet