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Building Tips and technical articles. => Building techniques => Topic started by: Mark Knoepfle on March 26, 2016, 05:00:33 PM
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Got my Tom's building tips and watched Bob Hunt's interview with Jim Lee. In that video Jim shows off his line wrapper and the technique of how to use it. I thought "This guy is a genius! I've go to make one of those." And so I did. Probably nowhere near as cool as Jim's but it cost me nothing. With these tools in hand and just enough information to be dangerous I'm off to make my first set of lines. Wish me luck.
Mark
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The wrapper looks handy. I just use about two feet of wire flopping around in free space.
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Tim,
the really nice thing about the wrapper is not that it holds the line but that you twirl it around the line and it wraps perfectly.
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Perhaps I should have said it wraps very nicely for Jim. I need some practice. Here are the first two ends.
I think I need to hard face the inside of the clothes pin where the wire runs through. It digs a little trough and doesn't want to wind from side to side of the mouth of the clip as I would like. Maybe some piano key pin felt would be the ticket.
Mark
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Well, the inspector rejected my ends because there was no visible loop past the wraps. I added some piano key pin felt (the good German stuff) and will try again.
Mark
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This is the fourth one. The felt seems to be working a bit better.
Mark
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Jim Lee is a pretty smart cookie, and has lots of neat things for your flight and tool box. One thing about your example, don't leave so much of a loop where you lay the end of the cable back toward the eyelet. That will have a tendency to catch on things. This is where heat shrink tubing comes in handy. Shrink it over the wire wrap to make things smooth but still flexible, and you can see and feel the loop in the cable.
Good luck and have fun,
Dan McEntee
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I hope your primary wrap looks better than your secondary wrap. You've got to try and wrap it side by side with no gaps or overlaps.
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MM- First pic in the last post is the primary. I think that it meets the requirements of no gaps or overlaps. But then I didn't have my glasses on...
Thank you for the pointer. I'll keep practicing. Thankfully these lines started life at 70'.
Mark
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Enjoyed some quiet time this morning and rewrapped the first two ends, again. This time I wore my glasses and paid close attention to the wraps.
The neighbors looked at me a bit funny as I marked out distances with chalk and a tape measure on the front sidewalk. One large block of wood with a hook, and a large paver on it, held the made up ends of the lines as I stretched them out and bent the ends to mark the distance.
Sat down with glasses on and finished up the other two ends. My first set of self made lines is in the bag.
Mark
Notes - I ended up taking the felt back out of the wrapper as it was paying out the line too easily.
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I used to hand wrap lines. Jim Lee has some great stuff. My self since seeing the swagging method of doing cable I have not looked back. A search should bring it up on here. H^^
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The neighbors looked at me a bit funny as I marked out distances with chalk and a tape measure on the front sidewalk. One large block of wood with a hook, and a large paver on it, held the made up ends of the lines as I stretched them out and bent the ends to mark the distance.
Here's a picture of a fixture I use. The drums are glued onto the board so that one wrap around is exactly 5 feet*. The thing has gotten more elaborate with age, but in the form pictured it had a peg driven into the wood at the 6 inch mark. I put an end on a line, wrap it around the fixture the correct number of times**, then finish the other end on the peg again. For lines that are not exact multiples of five feet I have driven in more pegs.
Drums are PVC sewer pipe. The board is a leftover bit of 1x6 from a remodel.
The two advantages are that you can do it at your bench, and you don't pick up any dirt by measuring outside. Given that I live in a rainy area, these are big advantages.
* I'm an engineer, so I figured out where to put them by lots of careful measurement and calculation. But before I mixed the glue I turned into a technician, so I measured my work, found it off, and just glued things down based on a tape measure wrapped around the drums.
** Well, usually. Sometimes I end up with a set of lines where one is five feet too long or too short.
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Nice jig! Thank you for sharing Tim.
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Tim-
Thanks for the picture and description. I had never thought of that, and it is such an elegant solution to my tape rule, tape, and driveway thing. Super!
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I bought one from Jim. They work.
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Thanks for the picture and description. I had never thought of that, and it is such an elegant solution to my tape rule, tape, and driveway thing. Super!
I think I need to post more pictures, then -- the thing has evolved a bit, mostly in that the drums now sport "combs" to keep the lines tidy as you wind them on. Without the "combs" you can make a full line set on the jig but it wants to tangle coming off. With them, everything stays nicely aligned.
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One thing I haven't seen mentioned that I do, is wrap all the way up to the thimble until I have just enough room to pass the tag end through to twist it and cut it. I have put a very light coat of 5 minute epoxy on some of mine, not touching the steel, but a protective coat on the copper wraps. Not enough to make a hard point at the entry, but to protect the wrapping from the insults it gets from just regular use. I know some probably think epoxy is a bad idea,
Rusty
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I have allways used Kevlar thread & cyano for wrapping. It's much stronger than copper and more flexible. And lighter, too. L