Katherine, thank you for your thoughtful post. What a clever idea to use additional shafts to firm up a selvedge. It's thoughts like that that reinforce how little I know yet.

Your comments make me happy that I can upgrade my 4 shaft LeClerc to 8 shafts when I feel the need to move in that direction.
I did subscribe to Jane Stafford's Online Guild two days ago and yes, I got all of last year's tutorials/classes. The email about the first one of 2018 was in my mailbox this morning.
I'm hoping that watching the videos will help me inch further up the weaving learning curve. The fact that the first episodes are taught in the order of setting up and executing a project on a loom is the hook that drew me in. Back to basics in an orderly manner.
I have used that same approach to machine knitting, using Susan Guagliumi's Craftsy class as a handy, easily accessible learning reference when I can't remember exactly how to do something, basic as it might be. So I'm hoping that the success with machine knitting that I've had so far due to Susan's excellent resource
in one place, as opposed to surfing You Tube, will be the big help in weaving that I'm looking for in Jane's Online Weaving Guild.
Plus the 4-shaft loom project/structure book,
Next Steps in Weaving, that Jodi recommended will also be a boon.
I'm so excited at what I've learned and the enthusiasm I feel reigniting just from this topic and from other recent topics in our Weaving forum. It doesn't take much to get me going with weaving, but I admit to having hit a long stall.
Kathryn