Couple of suggestions for winding very fine wire:
Make sure that the flange of the wire spool is very smooth with 
nothing to catch the wire.  Then lay the spool on its side and let 
the wire feed off the top end.  That way there is no inertia from the 
spool to break the wire when you accelerate the winder.  Even though 
the wire is twisting a little, with such fine wire it's not 
noticeable.  Also it works well to hold the wire between a couple of 
small felt pads to provide the very light tension you want.

Regards,
Brett

At 10:00 PM 7/21/2010, you wrote:
>I have wound down to around 40 ga. It it can be frustrating because 
>it takes very tension to break. I have opted to wire in the 30's and 
>used more turns and closer spacer magnets.  What I did was take the 
>source coil and put a piece of material thru the center like a 
>pencil. I clamp the pencil horizontal using one of those handsfree 
>holders which has two alligator clips which I grap the pencil ends 
>with. I put this assembly on the floor and hold the wire lightly 
>with my fingers near table height. I think it gave me a little more 
>slack if something happens during the winding. I only use this 
>proceedure when I'm using a variable speed drill. I use clear nail 
>polish because it already has a brush and it has a fairly low 
>viscosity. I like the Idea of stopping every so often and putting a 
>light coat on the top surface of the coil. OK this the part where 
>others probable will disagree. If the wire breaks, depending on the 
>situation, I tin both ends with the soldering iron and attach them 
>together and continue. The splice should be short and I havent had 
>two breaks close enough together to cause a short. It does leave a 
>slight bump in the coil because the splice is of larger diameter as 
>will be pretty much straight. If I need to know the coil resistance 
>during the process, I expose the wire near where I stopped with the 
>soldering iron and measure it's resistance to the starting end of the coil
>Regards
>Barry
>http://www.seismicvault.com


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