Hi... I am dressing my floor loom for the first time... so here's a silly question, how do I thread the heddles if they are divided by the middle screw? Sorry to be so nontechnical, but I am a new weaver...thanks for any help!

Comments

Mon, 05/12/2014 - 20:54

patweaves

There's no such thing as a silly question here... we were all new weavers at some point!  I hope I'm understanding what it is you're asking, so this response may or may not be helpful!

Here's a clip from the Schacht website showing the heddle bar and slide (yours may or may not have little "wings" on the heddle bar slide, depending on the loom's age).  Simply release the heddle bar from the hook (both upper and lower) and slide as many of the heddles as you need to either the right or left.

Mon, 05/12/2014 - 21:39

Queezle

I find I pinch my fingers, so do be careful! 

Mon, 05/12/2014 - 22:22

barleycorn

While we're on the subject, how do you add more heddles? Do the bars come out of the frames? I have a countermarche and just recently acquired a jack loom and have been wondering how to do this.

Mon, 05/12/2014 - 22:22

barleycorn

While we're on the subject, how do you add more heddles? Do the bars come out of the frames? I have a countermarche and just recently acquired a jack loom and have been wondering how to do this.

Mon, 05/12/2014 - 23:00

pammersw

Yes, you can unhook that hook, move all the heddles next to each other (NOT at the ends) and flex the metal bar to unhook it from one of the ends. Be careful you do not drop heddles. 

Fri, 05/16/2014 - 02:33

danteen (not verified)

If you are adding more than one or two heddles, it may be easiest to get them on in good order, by taking the shaft out of the loom altogether and laying it on a table.  You can do this by unscrewing the nut holding the bottom of the shaft to the aluminum lams and lifting out the shaft you will be working on.   (If there is a castle on your loom, you will have to remove all or part of it first.)    Hopefully the heddles you wish to add are all on some kind of temporary holding device such as a flat pieces of steel, knitting needles, etc.  Undo all the hooks, top and bottom, that secure the heddle bars to the shaft frame.  You could secure the existing heddles with some masking tape temporarily so they don't come off the bars.

    Then flexing the  metal heddle bars one at a time should allow you to remove their ends from one side piece or other and take the whole assembly  of bars and heddles out of the shaft frame.   You can lay the bars  with their heddles on the table and carefully slide the new heddles off their temporary holding device onto the bars of the shaft to which you are adding heddles. Make sure that the eyes are slanted in the same direction as those that are already on the shaft and they don't get out of order as you slide them onto the top heddle bar and then onto the bottom heddle bar.  Secure those new heddles with tape and flex the bars again to put them back into the grooves in the side pieces of the shafts.  Hook up the middle supports, then slide the shaft back down into it's place onto the bolt at the top of the aluminum lams.  This may have flopped down when you released the shaft in the first place, but you can rethread that bolt onto the shaft bottom and add the nut to it to secure.

You are good to go.  This may sound like a lot of work, but I just tried to write the steps in the procedure as clearly as I could.  I prepared 48 shaft frames this way with heddles for looms at a school and it worked well.

Teena Tuenge

Fri, 05/16/2014 - 19:22

barleycorn

Thanks you so much for your explicit, detailed answer Danteen. I don't have a Schacht but this will be extremely helpful. My new to me, used loom (Clement, out of business) does not and never did have any type of instruction papers.