Shuttle

A tool used on a loom to carry the weft thread back and forth through the shed, the temporary gap opened between the raised and lowered threads of the warp, interlacing the weft with the warp to build woven cloth. The simplest form is the stick shuttle, a flat, narrow length of wood notched at each end to hold the yarn; more developed shuttles carry a bobbin or pirn of thread inside a boat-shaped body that a weaver throws or passes through the shed by hand or, on a mechanized loom, by a mechanism that flies it across. In the United States shuttles were traditionally made from flowering dogwood, prized for being hard, resistant to splintering and able to take a smooth polish; British shuttle makers favored boxwood, cornel or persimmon.