Hand winders... do you get eye strain?

[LtKojak]

Did your mother ever tell you that winding by hand would make you go blind?

Next thread: hairy palms.

Erm... are you SURE you're talking 'bout winding PICKUPS...?

[Mark Hammer]

I wind my pickups with the spool on the floor, facing upwards, so that the wire unwinds vertically. The bobbin sits attached to the chuck of a hand-drill that is clamped to the counter/bench-top.. I look downwards at the bobbin spinning like a propeller and the spool below it, and tension the wire with thumb and index of my left hand, while I crank the handle with my right. I use a black swatch of that "fun foam" you can buy from the hobby/crafts store, and stick it under neath the spool, so that when I look down it is all against a black background. Makes everything I need to see easily visible. A piece of black bristol board would probably work just as well.

[David Schwab]

I wonder if the old factory hand winders just went blind or if they coped. I've noticed reading glasses in a lot of pictures I've seen, but other than that I'm not sure what is different.

You really don't need to see the wire as you wind except at the traverse stops. Otherwise you just need to see the coil shape as it's building.

[Joe Gwinn]

I do close one eye and that does help a lot, except when it is time to open my eye! Having my hand over the eye seems to help with the strain because I'll tend to squint a bit with the other eye. Maybe an eye patch would help?

Drug stores sell cheap eye patches. Many eye aliments disable the eye during treatment, and it's best to enure that the crippled eye isn't used until it has fully healed.

Joe Gwinn

[Possum]

...

Traditionally in sweat shops young girls were put to work sewing, probably for winding coils too, just look at photos of Leo's winding girls. If you use a piece of white paper and get enough light on it and the back edge of the coil you can see the wire pretty well.

[cryptozoo]

If you're going to go the eye-patch route, make sure alternate which eye you keep the patch on. You don't want to end up with a lazy.

[frankfalbo]

If you're going to go the eye-patch route, make sure alternate which eye you keep the patch on. You don't want to end up with a lazy.

You mean you guys don't wind two coils at a time, with one eye on each wire? I'll bet if you focused right, you'd see both wires as one wire, highlighting any deviations in pattern from one coil to the next. Double your productivity!

Kidding aside I can wink both eyes, so I don't use a patch, but I wear contacts, and when you re-open an eye it takes a few blinks to reset the contact. In between those two moments I'm using the force.

[FunkyKikuchiyo]

ah yes, Jedi pickup winding.... I've been playing around with this, but I didn't want to reveal this until I had a marketable product.

I think some of my problems might be because of the lasik surgery I had years ago. A common side effect of the surgery is being more aware of unsteady/flickering lights. I'm not quite sure why, but the quality of my vision changes more dramatically with different kinds of light. I may experiment with the type of bulb in my work light, I've always found full spectrum bulbs (the kind they try to sell to SAD patients) to be great at the work bench.

Remember, we must use our powers of luthiery for good instead of evil...

[StarryNight]

I've got a $12 swing lamp with a magnifier on it (2 actually). I works great for winding or especially soldering after winding as my eyes have a hard time focusing after staring intensly for so long.