Gang-winding replica coils by hand

[R.G.]

It occurred to me that if you have a setup which has a variable speed motor turning one bobbin and also something like Joe's wire guiding disks to keep flyaway wires from happening, that you could stack perhaps half a dozen coils on the spindle, each with its own guiding disks. So you can now spin N bobbins at a time.

If you make a multi-guide consisting of a sliding rod or bar with a number of wire guides clamped on it, sitting at the same distance apart as the bobbins, and have one tensioner per wire, you can now hand-guide several bobbins simultaneously.

Yeah, you gotta be able to watch for disasters on more than one at a time. Maybe pairs are more reasonable. Yes, you have to have N spools of wire to feed simultaneously. Spooling off to low mass secondary spools could do that.

You can make the sliding guide from a metal rod or tube sliding in oilite bushings with adjustable guides made from shaft collars and with the wire guide attached to the collar. An alternate is an L-bracket mounted on ball bearings or plastic slide bearings to slide sideways with a set of wire guides clamped to position. A handle on the traverse makes the multi-traverse move them all at the same time.

It's not useful to the one-at-a-time winder, but the commercial guys might like it.

[David Schwab]

It's not useful to the one-at-a-time winder, but the commercial guys might like it.

It is if you want to wind two coils in a humbucker exactly the same.

TV Jones does exactly that.

[R.G.]

Yep, that's the idea. But that looks like a fancier coil winder than I had in mind... 8-)

[JGundry]

Been there , done that am doing that. Works like a charm, you can rig it for hand or computer wire guiding. I made my winder to do 10 humbucker bobbins at one shot but it was a bit scary from a stability standpoint with that many so I only do 6 at a time. When you consider how simple winding a coil really is there are many low tech ways to do it. And if you are trying to aim for a more vintage pickup design low tech is the way to go as far as tensioning goes as well.