A few AVL-tips

So many tips-and-tricks are obvious, once you’ve heard them... here are some of mine.

From the ground up; front to back:

Those irritating metal bars that protect the treadle pulleys, where the apron bar (and sometimes the cloth) so often catches:

now covered with a piece of cardboard – no more catching:

(I used a piece of paper for years, but when it tore it got replaced with cardboard)

The beater top that goes with the double fly-box used to be attached to the boxes. As I quite often change between single and double box, I had problems every time I wanted to change: how to handle a 60” beater top with a heavy lump at each end?
The answer (unfortunately out of focus):

My shafts are numbered. (Thank you, Laura – when you told me, I was still so much in countermarch mode. On the CM I constantly take the shafts off and on – no way I would number them) Numbering them "the American way" also helps if I print out a threading using numbers.

Next, I have a permanently installed holder for the brake weight:

Then, following the ground-up-rule of above, there is the “grenade pin” on the cloth storage roller – it has got a hole for storage when not in use. (OK, it is nearly always in use, but once it fell into a box full of yarn – that never happens anymore.)

(The number comes from the time I was disassembling the loom to take it to a show. Nearly all older Swedish looms are permanently marked some way or another.)

At the back, first comes the numbered sectional. It is numbered two ways: from the middle outwards and from left to right.

Lastly, I have taken the top off of the tension box "raddle". (Laura has a much more sophisticated system here – I just use painter’s tape if needed.)

The pivoting reed still has it’s top – I would like to take it off, but the tines get unstable and I don’t think it would survive for long without the stabilisation.

Still no luck on the picker return front. The buttonhole elastic now has survived about 10000 picks each without sagging, and I have a whole roll of it...