Loom Doctor--Sticking Shaft Repair

 I got to play loom doctor today--twice!  The second time was the bigger fix, so it get's to go first.

See that bolt there on the left?  The problem for the day is a rod, hidden underneath it that all the lams that lift the shafts use as a pivot point.

For a while now I have had problems with shaft #7 sticking on my Mighty Wolf.  I've checked the usual things--pushing in on the little pins that connect the wood to the metal--but really the problem seemed to be that the lams were all pushing together at the back of the loom on the right side.  I've messed around with this before and been able to shift all the lams back towards the front of the loom, but it never stayed properly positioned for long.

Today I finally got in the right position to see the hole.  Unfortunately, I took the photos after I fixed the problem (a working loom is more important than blog photos), but I can tell you where it was.  There, one inch under the back of the bolt, right where the rod should rest, was a hole.  I could see it!

A quick peek at the Schacht website let me know that my loom wouldn't fall apart if I undid the lock-nuts on these bolts (there are two of them).  I loosened the nuts, flexed the wood and pushed up on the  lams at that pivot point, and after a moment or two of wiggling, got the pivot rod reseated in the hole.

Boy does my loom weave better now!  Shaft #7 is no longer sticking and all the rest of the shafts seem happier with the right amount of wiggle room!  Hooray!

Here's a bigger picture view of the front of the loom with the bolt on the right side of center.

 Loom doctoring #1--although technically this was a warping issue and not a loom one.--One side of the scarf warp was looser than the other.  I tried a quick fix with a few bamboo skewers and some weights, but it didn't help much.  In fact, I realized as I looked at this, the fat warp threads probably increased the diameter of the wraps of the warp on the back beam making that side fatter than the other.  Translation?  I wound a bump into my warp and a "quick fix" wasn't likely to solve the issue.

The solution?  Re-wind the warp on the back beam.  I wound the warp onto the front beam, untied the fat warp threads from the back beam, then re-wound the warp onto the back beam without those fat threads.  The warp went on smoothly and I hung the fat ends on the raddle and provided a separate weight for them, ala suplementary warp threads.

I like weaving--especially when the loom and the warp work! :)