"D" is for Dent

D is for DENT -

An opening in the reed through which the ends of the warp are put. The more dents a reed has per inch of it's length, the finer the materials which may be woven with it. Often more than one warp end is put through each dent of the reed.

According to my (faulty) memory, the first reeds were made out of 'reeds'. And even though today we mostly use metal reeds, we still call them "REEDS." The reed is inserted in grooves in a movable frame called the beater. It is a very good idea to center your project in the center of your reed!

This chart will help you get the ends per inch you need for your project according to the reed you have to use. 

Let us say you only have a 12 dent reed and your project is 20 inches wide. Using your 12 dent reed, you would enter your ends like this. The first dent sley one end, the next dent sley two ends, the next dent sley 2 ends. Repeat this across until you run out of ends. It is written like this " 1-2-2"

Another example is with a 10 dent reed, project is 5 inches wide, you would sley your reed 0-1. Meaning, you skip one dent and sley one end in the next dent. Skip the next, sley one end in the next dent. It is written like this "0-1".

30 dent reed and 15 dent reed.

Or sometimes, when you can afford it, you can have several different reeds. That is why I have a 30 dent reed. I had a project that was 60 ends per inch (epi) and I just wanted to thread the reed 2 per dent. Or if I want something that will be 30 epi, I will only have one thread per dent. Yeah!

10 dent reed and 8 dent reed.