I would love to see a vid of it in action

this looks stupidly simple. is it? i need to see a video of this in action.

I actually wanted to make one of these for my wife, but no video, no plans, no pictures of the thing being put together… dissapointing to say the least.

@dan: Not necessarily. Or rather, you might want to spend it doing something other than winding balls of yarn. A lot of people who knit do it in what would otherwise be wasted time, like while riding on the bus.

I don’t understand why the yarn needs to be re-wound in the first place.

Don’t forget to harvest a perfectly good gear motor from a car windshield wiper mechanism.

They run pretty slow and can go from 3v up to 14 with no trouble.

This is cool, not as cool as if they hadn’t used a hand-winder to start with, but pretty cool as a finished product.

@anony mouse: All it takes is fifteen minutes and a cat with access to the yarn stash and you’d understand.

@coderer,

Regarding the amount of time saved, he said he made this for a friend’s yarn store, where she likely has to ball many skeins a day, and probably does it for lots of customers. Hand balling yarn takes several minutes (I seem to remember it taking my mom about 5-10.) This machine probably does it in about a minute, without the repetitive wrist strain.

One ball here and there may not take up their whole day, but if this tool lets them cut two hours from the start of a multi-color project, I’d let them decide if it’s worth it.

Hey if you aren’t a knitter then you don’t know what all is involved. I’m 70 years old and have done my share of rolling balls on winders, because when the yarn comes out of the center it does not twist while knitting. Also you don’t have to stop and pull on the ball to unwind it or pull out of a store bought skein. Also it gives the yarn a chance to relax before you start your project and the tension on the yarn is more smoothly knitted.

I’m a double amputee and can’t get to my knitting machines upstairs and not sure if I can still get the carriage to go across the bed. Also I don’t have the flexibility in my fingerd nymore. So it seems like hand knitting may just be out of the question here soon. I can still crochet. Or do what I’m doing now surfing on the net.

So if you are just in your 20′s, 30′s and just plain jealous because you couldn’t figure out how to make the modifications that this young (?) guy has done. Then I think you better just shut your mouth until you have something better to contribute to this site.

In fact it seems to me alot of you are chewing on sour grapes. AT least he has used his BRAIN to help a friend. Who know maybe in the future what he has accomplished on this small project may lead to a big and better future in his life.

As I said before seem if you can do any BETTER!