I recently continued working on the el Lahun/Kahun sling from Manchester museum and while looking up the different possible classifications of the textile I stumbled (again) over twining.
I already did a different approach based on warp twining. It is shown here:
http://slinging.org/forum/YaBB.pl?num=1360291032/0The above approach is rather complicated, needs a lot of tools, is also quite wasteful on thread and has a few other possible shortcomings.
Therefore I asked myself the question: Is it necessary to use tools, looms, jigs or frames to reproduce this structure? The answer is: Not really.
In the following short tutorial I outline a novel "no-tools" approach. It is inspired by Timothy Potters frame-based method (
http://www.seekyee.com/Slings/howtos/tut1.htm) and the method by E. M. Burgess (An Ancient Egyptian Sling Reconstructed, Journal of the Arms and Armour Society, Voll II, No 10, June 1958, pp 226-230, further illustrated by Jörn Michaelsen
http://s567609897a9e4512.jimcontent.com/download/version/1348458289/module/58455... ) but leaves away the frame or the jig.
It is possibly a bit slower than a frame or jig-based approach but has the advantage of not requiring any tools except a knife or scissors. The produced textile has a very similar structure to what is yielded by the different other approaches. I believe that the distinguishing features can be easily removed by some minor changes. There are also many possible variations of this method possible.
I loosely followed the features (twining, wrappings) and different thread thicknesses as well as overal dimensions as observed in the el-Lahun/Kahun sling on display in Manchester Museum (Acc. No. 103). However, I did not attempt to make a perfect copy.
A word of caution: This guide is intended for intermediate to expert braiders (or beginners with an excellent frustration tolerance). It shows all required steps but is not very elaborate. I assume that the guide by Timothy Potter is known.