A Flight Bound for the Hand Loom Shuttle: The Heaviest Shuttle That Still Crosses in Time at a Stated Loom Speed

A heavier shuttle carries more weft, steadies its own flight, and asks more of everything else: more energy from the picker, more violence at the check, and more time in the air, because a picker of fixed energy accelerates a heavy shuttle to a lower speed. On a wide or fast loom that time is rationed. The shuttle must cross, be checked, and be still while the reed beats and the shed changes, and if the flight takes too large a share of the pick cycle the loom's timing collapses into shuttle traps and smashed picks. This paper computes the ration. From a stated picker energy and a stated flight share of the cycle, it derives the heaviest shuttle that can serve given combinations of reed width and loom speed. In the computed results, the bound 14m 180 is 892; the bound 14m 210 is 655; the bound 18m 180 is 539; the bound 10m 210 is 1284; the mid mass velocity is 11.4. Weigh the shuttle before blaming the loom's timing. The study is simulated, not measured; all inputs are stated assumptions, printed in the accompanying computation, which readers may replace with their own values and re-run.