My First Winder!

[Tman]

I just bought this Hi tech winder off of ebay. it is some kind of craftsman wood lathe. made in the 1950's that is a 6 place mechanical counter on the right side. top speed 200 rpm. $25 usd.

Tman

[ken]

I saw that too, I was thinking about building a winder that looked like "Leo's" supposed original pickup winder, and buying that one for the parts.

I hope it works OK for you, but you may find that the mechanical counter will be the first thing to go after you've used it for awhile.

Good Luck!

Ken

[Tman]

I like the John Fisher counter Idea with the calculator. wire up a calculators = switch to a magnetic reed switch . and place it near a magnet monted on the shaft. now I am getting excited . I may also set up some tooling for out put transformer bobbins.

[ken]

Is there some kind of speed control?

Ken

[ken]

Too late, I saw it after I wrote the post. You may have to clean out the motor
before you try it too.

Ken

[Tman]

yea thats it under the motor some kind of reostat. I have yet to have this treasure in my posession. there are caps on the sides of the motor , probably for carbon brush access. there were other photos that I could not download off ebay. the far left casting has an oval "craftsman" red name tag on the back side. . That is a UsA Sears department store brand name. I will do away with the wood base and remake it out of aluminium plate. it is suposed to be about 32 inches long. that is kind of short for a wood lathe. if this motor only goes 200 RPM I doubt if it is the original lathe motor.
When I get it tooled up I will post a new picture for comparison. I have heard some of the pickup sound files from posters in this forum. and I am very impressed. I am looking forward to exploring this technology with you guys.

TMAN

[ken]

Maybe the mainshaft only goes 200 RPM, the motor should have RPM listed on its plate, probably 1750 RPM or so. So you will need new drive pulleys and a new belt too.

You will also need some kind of baseplate to mount your pickup on.
You can get one of those rubber drill-sander disks for your hand drill, then take apart the sander disk and keep the metal shaft part, make a 4" diameter or so acrylic plastic disk with a hole in the middle the same size as the screw in the middle of the disk shaft, assemble the shaft to the acrylic disk, and this will go in your winder's drill chuck.

Ken

[Just Bob]

Looks like something custom-built to me. That isn't a lathe motor. It's a reasonably nice right-angle gear motor. Could be an older Bodine. They're not cheap, even used. Too slow for a lathe. The motor itself should run on either AC or DC. The motor part can run up to 5 or 10,000 RPM. No simple way to find out the output speed until you hook it up unless it's marked. Worm gears can be anything from around 5:1 to a hundred or three. Craftsman also sold general purpose bearings and stuff. Could be that just the bearings are craftsman, not the whole unit.

Anyway, not a bad starting point. Maybe look for a foot pedal for a sewing machine. That should work with this kind of motor and might be more convenient than a knob.

[David Schwab]

Originally Posted by Tman

it is suposed to be about 32 inches long. that is kind of short for a wood lathe. if this motor only goes 200 RPM I doubt if it is the original lathe motor.

That's not a wood lathe... a lathe wouldn't have a counter. It was probably some kind of winder for something... someone had to count turns.

Very funky looking!

[Tman]

I was just guessing when I said wood lathe . The Ebay ad said antique home made radio coil winding machine. so it was actually pieced together to be a dedicated coil winder. I was also watching a George stevens coil winder on ebay. it went from $200 to $1200 in the last 5 seconds. it had all these gears and cams . it looked cool but way too complicated. thanks Ken for the tooling ideas.
Tman