If you are someone who enjoys weaving with medium to heavy yarns, you may be using a stick shuttle and you probably find you are always refilling the shuttle as they don’t take a lot of yarn. The answer to this challenge can be as simple as using a weaving tool such as a ski shuttle.
Why does the ski shuttle perform better in some cases?
With a ski shuttle the weft yarn is wrapped onto the ski shuttle in a sideways fashion and you can get a lot of yarn onto the vertical blade of the shuttle and still not have it interfere with the warp yarn as you glide the ski shuttle side to side.
On the other hand, the stick shuttle is loaded with weft yarn opposite to the ski type, and the more weft you load on the taller the shuttle becomes, and this can make life difficult as you pass this style of shuttle from side to side. As an aside, it has been said that the ski shuttle is a little more sophisticated and elegant.
Ski shuttles come in several forms, and the range we have handcrafted are listed below. Ours are made of two pieces of wood with the base plate being formed to a ski tip at either end, then attached to that a vertical blade with fingers that hold the yarn onto the shuttle. We strive to make these ski shuttles as attractive as possible by using contrasting woods on some and figured woods on others. The ski shuttles we have available at present are listed below.
