Not everything needs to be pretty.

[JasonGotaProblem]

Sometimes it just needs to work.

DIY rod wrapper with a DC motor, retrofitted to the rig Joe gave me in place of the AC motor it came with.
https://youtube.com/shorts/UTWRJsSi7lY?feature=share

[Hardy Boy]

I say that every time I look in the mirror 


Cheers:

Todd

[foakes]

Nicely done, Jason!

Best, Fred

[Gfish]

Yup. But in it's own way, it's a good lookin machine to me. Simple & functional & easy to adjust, repair and improve-on. Not some cosmetically pleasing expensive unit built in a corp. factory.

[steelfish]

that pedal thingy is pretty cool

I liked it a lot

[Midway Tommy]

Interesting innovation.    Think about possibly moving it down to the floor as a foot pedal. That would free up both your hands.   

[JasonGotaProblem]

Interesting innovation.    Think about possibly moving it down to the floor as a foot pedal. That would free up both your hands.   

Clever fella that fella.

Yeah it's a foot pedal. And its 4' long. So more of a foot bar.

[Lunker Larry]

Looking at that I was thinking you could use an old sewing machine. It's already set up with a Pedal and motor set up for variable speed. You'd just have to come up with a way to mount it and interface with the rod.

[JasonGotaProblem]

Looking at that I was thinking you could use an old sewing machine. It's already set up with a Pedal and motor set up for variable speed. You'd just have to come up with a way to mount it and interface with the rod.

That was actually the original design. It had a sewing machine motor and pedal. But AC motors don't do so well with the slow startup, it's minimum speed was about 20rpm. this can crawl. Or go 500rpm.

Im finding though that since the pedal is such thin wood at the far end the twisting of the bar is such that I can't get up to top speed. But that's ok.

[steelfish]

But AC motors don't do so well with the slow startup, it's minimum speed was about 20rpm. this can crawl. Or go 500rpm.

I dont do well AT any speed of the power wrapper LOL

I have a nice PacBay power wrapper and 95% of the time I use it as manual wrapper 
I never in a hurry to finish my rods and prefer rotating the blank with my hand and have complete control of the feeling while wrapping it.

[Midway Tommy]

I never in a hurry to finish my rods and prefer rotating the blank with my hand and have complete control of the feeling while wrapping it.

I'm with you, Alex. I feel like I have much better control of the thread lay by rotating the rod manually. That way I never get overlays and it's easier to keep the thread tight so there's no spaces.

[oc1]

The first power wrapers were all made of old sewing machine motot and foot pedal.  It was a thing back then. 

I couldn't get the hang of it back then and can't now.  I usually wrap in a recliner in front of the TV.  There's no particular hurry.

[JasonGotaProblem]

The other thing I hate about AC motors is even when you can adapt to the 0-60mph startup, it is by nature jittery. The current is coming in and out of phase constantly, and you can feel that the motor is only being pushed forward when it's in phase. No matter how hard i try, I'll never be able to do a clean tiger wrap on an AC motor. But with this new setup, I may try again.

I can't do the recliner thing like yourself and Joe prefer. I tried. The fact that I don't watch tv has nothing to do with it. My hands are so screwed up from years of judo and karate competition that I just can't do it. I need something that spins to rest the rod on. That's a minimum. The fact that it spins it for me is a nice extra.

I tell ya what though, usually I can't do more than 2 guides worth of under wraps in a night because I need my hands for my job. Last night I did under wraps on a whole rod in under an hour, with distraction breaks. The one shown below, for a Fuji LC20H, would have taken forever. Instead i got nice tight wraps in under a minute. Aaaand my hands don't hurt today. If you wanna sound like my wife, you could mention that i coulda used the time I saved to clean up the stuff in the background of the pic.

For the record the black n decker 12v drill was $25 the bike cable came in a 2 pack for $8 and the rest I already had.

[oldmanjoe]

Yep the DC motor / drill is a nice improvement , you can keep a slow steady Rpm or you can step on the gas ..

[steelfish]

-- My hands are so screwed up from years of judo and karate competition that I just can't do it. I need something that spins to rest the rod on. That's a minimum. The fact that it spins it for me is a nice extra.

I tell ya what though, usually I can't do more than 2 guides worth of under wraps in a night because I need my hands for my job. Last night I did under wraps on a whole rod in under an hour, with distraction breaks. The one shown below, for a Fuji LC20H, would have taken forever. Instead i got nice tight wraps in under a minute. .

Jason, you're drill setup is good and all and the best thing is that it works for you.

in my personal experience and as a note after reading about your hands, its helps a lot when turning the blank on a manual wrapper to have rollers with bearings on the stands, the amount of effort from the hand muscles to spin the blank is almost nothing, none, nada !!

1hr to do many underwraps in a rod and wrapping a long underwrap in minute sounds like a pretty good time but I prefer to take my time and dont look at the clock or checking how fast I did it when working on rods, maybe thats the reason I found myself working on rods at 2am