One of the things I found when I got my AVL (lo, these many decades ago) was that the heddle keepers jumped up when the shafts came down and very quickly started drilling holes into the shafts. After thinking about it for a while I grabbed a bag of small (1″?) elastics I had hanging around and looped one end around the metal pin, under the shaft and over the pin again from the other side.
The elastics aren’t ‘perfect’ as they do tend to dry out and break, but when that happens I grab another elastic, drop it onto the pin, under the shaft and over the pin again. Takes a few seconds and it’s done. And it’s cheap.
Now there probably isn’t another person on the planet who has the same problem but if I’d left them, the heddle keepers would have drilled themselves right through the shafts and then I would have had a much bigger problem.
So, if your tools aren’t working as well as you’d like them to, there may be a very easy and simple solution to hand. A little creative thinking – outside the box, as the saying goes – and things might go much more smoothly. And that’s always A Good Thing, right? 🙂