I recently had what appeared to be a serious loom malfunction. As it turned out it wasn't nearly as serious as it first appeared but thought I would post it here for anyone else who has the same problem.
I have a 1970s Toika Liisa. On both sides of the castle there are 2 pieces of wood that cover the ends of the rods that hold the jacks. I thought initially that these had been added by the previous owner but there are pictures of similar looms on Weavolution and they all have exactly the same pieces of wood, so they are an original part of the loom
I was just tying a new warp on the loom when I noticed that the shafts were at about 20 degrees to the horizontal. I re-did the tie up, thinking that was the cause but it didn't help. I'm not much taller than the castle so I climbed up on the frame and realised what was causing my problem. The rod that holds the jacks, the permanent one, not the one that locks the jacks for the tie up had moved to the back of the loom and pushed the piece of the wood out of place. This meant there was space for the front end of the rod to escape from the hole that should hold it. No wonder the shafts were at a strange angle.
End of rod protruding through castle and lifting piece of wood seen from the side
Same view from above
Empty hole where end of rod should be, allowing jacks, and shafts, on one side to drop
Once I had identified the problem, I just wanted to fix it and get on with my weaving. It was about this time that I decided that the best solution was to lever the rod up with something strong, I was thinking a jemmy or a crowbar, and and hammer it in from the back. Did I mention that as well as being not much taller than the loom, I also live alone? Clearly this was a job for superwoman or at least someone with more tools and longer arms than I had.
Reality set in and I invited a good weaving friend and her technically minded husband round for morning tea and suggested that he bring tools. He took one look, suggested that my friend and I lift up the shafts to take the weight off the jacks and just slid the rod back into position. He then replaced the very small nail in the piece of wood that covers the end of the jack with a somewhat larger one so it wouldn't happen again.
Once all this excitement was over, I realised that if I had tied the shafts to the castle with a piece of cord to take the weight off the jacks, I could probably have fixed it very easily all by myself