Anyone who has ever wound a toroidal coil by hand can tell you that it’s not exactly a fun job. Even with the kinds of coils used in chokes and transformers for ham radio, which generally hav… ...

The wire gets coated with wax as it feeds out to the coil, serving not only to lubricate things a bit but also to provide some tackiness to encourage the magnet wire to stay in place on the coil form.

A wire winder made by John Cotherman (photo) and his father Bill mostly uses materials that John had on hand. A cattle operation uses lots of wire to create temporary paddocks and replace old ...