Wool Yarn Ball Winder Repair

I took my DIY Wool Winder and DIY Umbrella Swift to the Yarn Festival at the LYS last Friday. The Yarn Campers were showing off all their work from a week of Yarn Camp. Not only had they learned how to knit, but they also learned felting and hand-dyeing yarn as well. They had some beautiful work to show.

My wool winder broke while winding one of the Camper's hanks of hand-dyed yarn, so the LYS's shop winder (a little Royal) was used to finish the last couple of hanks. Before my wool winder broke, all the Campers got a chance to crank it for awhile. My wool winder is brightly painted, and all the gears are exposed, so it is fun to watch while winding yarn.

The wool winder broke for the second time in the same place: where the tube connects to the 10-tooth gear. The first time it broke was shortly after building the prototype. I had only glued the tube to the gear blank. I repaired it by glueing and nailing the tube to the gear blank. The second time it broke in the same place, so now I know that this is a stress point in the machine. I repaired it the second time by drilling three holes equally around and through the gear blank about an inch into the tube. Then I glued the tube to the gear blank, glued wooden dowels into the three holes, and added a drop of glue to the nail holes, and re-nailed it. When the glue dried, I put it back together. This is the fourth time I've taken the wool winder apart and put it back together again. Each time, it runs a little smoother.

The next time it breaks, I think I'll sink the tube into the back of the gear blank, then glue and screw it together. To do that, I'll have to make another longer tube. I put a sketch of my suggested method of repairing this part on this page of the wool winder tutorial

Wool Yarn Ball Winder

Instead of constantly updating the wool winder information on the Animation and Automata blog, I decided to make a static web page for it: Wool Yarn Ball Winder. There is also a page for the Umbrella Swift.

That site has more detailed information, and it will be easier to update. So far, I have a Rough Draft finished and uploaded. I'm not a technical writer, so trying to explain how to make a Wool Winder is actually quite difficult. Part of the difficulty stems from trying to make the instructions generic, so that people can make a custom wool winder that does the work they want it to do, rather than slavishly copying the 3:1 ratio wool winder that I made.

I'm also trying to make some new drawings that show more details. I'm doing all the drawings using the KolourPaint program on my Debian GNU/Linux computer. I will continue polishing the tutorial until it reaches a finished state. Anyone with questions can PM me on Ravelry.