Fix a Hat Knitting Loom

My wife ended up getting a hat knitting loom some how a long time ago and wanted to use it this last winter to make hats. I had already used it with my daughter a handful of times and really hated it. It didn't perform like they do on tiktok where people hook drills up to them and make a hat in seconds. Ours was always broken, made tons of noise (sounded like it was skipping gears), etc. I hated the thing.

It made hats, don't get me wrong, but there was always a problem with the tension, the yarn, the way I was holding it, or the weather.

I got mad and fixed it on multiple occasions but never figured out the real problem...until now!

(ps. I earn a small commission from some of the links in this article.)

1. Knitting loom (get it off marketplace or something. right now, it's on sale for $40 and I think that I would pay that much for it)
2. 5-minute epoxy
3. graphite dry lube - the stuff for pinewood derby cars
4. a #1 Phillips screwdriver with a long shaft (this may vary depending on what screws you have)
5. scrap piece of 3/4" plywood and some 3/4" pan head screws.
6. 14ga solid copper wire (I just cut it out of some wire from a shelf in the garage
7. drill
8. drill bit set (same size as your wire)

Ok, so I've wrestled this cheaply made machine for more hours than I would like to admit. There are four things that can go wrong and one of them is just figuring out the right tension on the yarn. They make little tensioners and they help a ton.

I'll list the machine problems in order of what the issue is:

1. The gear slipped - You can buy replacement gears that are built differently (namely, the gear is held on with a screw that will probably tear out) or you can follow this tutorial.
2. The rising knitting parts get stuck - use the dry lube when you take this thing apart anyway
3. The machine flexes - secure it to a piece of wood

We're going to cover the first two items because it's a tear down and rebuild. Screwing it to a piece of wood really shouldn't need much explanation.

There's four screws on the bottom that need to be removed. Do that and the top pops off. Remove the center ring and lube every riser/needle (sorry, I forgot to grab a photo). Don't worry, the graphite doesn't seem to transfer to actual needle part so it doesn't get on yarn in my experience.

Then, remove the two screws holding the gear in place

This is what I found to be happening quite a bit. The gear would get pulled forward by an 1/8-1/4 inch which wouldn't allow it to make full contact to the loom gear. This would cause it to skip which made it incredibly frustrating to operate. Also, the skipping somehow also coincided with skipped stitches. Regardless of why, it made running the machine less than fun.

I tried gluing it, but it still would break free. So, I got mad and pinned it.

Drill a hole big enough to stick your wire through. Then put your wire in and bend the wire so that it can't move. I added epoxy to the whole thing while I was putting it together to make certain that it wouldn't move. Be sure to wipe off any excess where it will be riding on the plastic axle housing. You don't want the axle to have a bump and not fit in its place anymore.

Also, don't install this until the epoxy is fully cured. Stand it up so that any excess runs toward the know, not the gear until it's dry (probably 24 hours to be on the safe side).

Reverse the steps to get it put back together. Add one of those tensioner things, bolt it to a board, and you're good to go! I've made 15+ hats without issue since I fixed these simple little things!