Homemade hand drill pickup winder

This crafty example demonstrates that you can wind a pickup with very simple gear. It's economical, although it has no way to count the number of winds.

Clamp an electric hand drill to a workbench. The speed control is simply a second clamp which is tightened onto the drill trigger: screwing it downtighter presses the trigger and speeds up the drill.

We fashioned a mounting plate in the shape of the pickup (with a recess for the eyelets), and mounted that onto a metal shaft that's held in the drill chuck. Whatever your method, see that the pickup is spinning true and straight.

You'll be moving the wire back and forth as it feeds onto the coil, and you'll want to create a "traverse limiter" to keep it between the two flatwork pieces. On the Schatten Pickup Winder, this is a polished metal rod with adjustable right and left limiters. For this simple winder, the limiter is a hole drilled in a piece of wood that pivots right and left. The hole must be sanded very smooth.