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top of shafts, some of them with 'keeper strings', some without

Someone commented on a group that they were getting fed up with the heddles on their loom 'falling' off the shafts and wondered what other people do.

I am quite sure that there are many ways to address this issue, but I have the benefit of having woven on European type looms and was aware of the standard way to deal with heddles and shafts when using those looms.

Now, on my Megado, there is very little room between shafts so whatever gets done, needs to bear the tight tolerances of the loom in mind.  Digging into my memory banks, I remembered the very simple solution on the 'usual' European loom.  I don't know what the 'proper' term is, but I call it a 'keeper' string.

I haven't installed these on every shaft - yet.  It's a bit fiddly so I've been tying one on the shafts that seem to chronically toss their heddles off the top of the shaft which then tangle and make a right mess.  Plus I'm not patient so my 'solution' to getting rid of the rat's nest of heddles was to just cut them off the loom.  

Unfortunately, TexSolv heddles are quite expensive and as I began to run out of 'extra' heddles, I knew I had to do something more effective.  

I have a spool of seine twine, so I grabbed that because it was good and strong (and it is what is commonly used for jobs like this) and threading the seine twine through the hole at the end of the shaft I tied the string to one end of the shaft, then measured out enough string to reach to the  other end of the same shaft and tied the string to shaft as tightly as I could.  The string needs to be taut enough that it prevents the tops of the heddles from slipping off the end of the shaft.

The photo isn't great, but hopefully will show how it works.  The red circle indicates the keeper string on two adjacent shafts and travelling towards the other end where the string is secured in the hole there.

Someone asked if the keeper string doesn't interfere with the shafts rising.  It doesn't - because the string is just tied to each end of the *same* shaft and does not interact with anything else.

I just tried to find my Swedish weaving book because I'm fairly certain it has a drawing of how this works, but it's gone walkabout.  I may have loaned it to someone and just forgotten.  

Anyway, I plan to add keeper strings to all of the shafts - eventually.  It's a simple and inexpensive fix.  It just takes time and a bit of fiddling to thread the string into the hole at each end, make sure it's running as straight as possible, tightly enough to actually prevent the heddles from being tossed off the shaft.

Do what is appropriate for you, your loom, and your pocketbook.  I won't say this is the 'only' way to fix the issue, but it has stood the test of time and it works well for me.