When rearranging heddles prior to threading I have only seen the briefest mention of unhooking the heddle bars from the center hooks (Janet Dawson) but have seen several videos in which they are clearly unhooked while the weaver threads the loom. I watched Jane Stafford skillfully pop them out, and her loom (Leclerc Fanny CB) is the same as mine but it was like she does it all the time and didn’t indicate the amount of force needed to do this without bending the heddle bars. I found a very expensive replacement spring hook at Camilla Valley Farms in Canada and that Schacht has a less expensive equivalent, which looks like it allows an easier release. Any thoughts about this - I am afraid of bending my heddle bars and up to now have gotten by with careful counting of heddles, no ability to scoot left or right of center for best alignment. My loom has been retrofitted with Texsolv. You can see I had to tie a home made heddle to have enough on shaft 1 on my last project to the right of the hook, which is like a roadblock. So my question is: what is the trick for popping the heddle bar out of the center hook? I have only done `3 projects on this loom and have awkwardly managed without unhooking.
