A few notes:
1) The winder has a light right above the faceplate to make things easy to see. The On/Off switch for the sewing machine is located on the light housing. Above the shaft are a couple oiling holes for the bushings/bearings. You may occasionally have to help the winder start by nudging the flywheel or the faceplace, after which it runs just fine. The speed is regulated by the footpedal, letting you determine the winding speed. The black jig ply construction also probably helps see what's going on.
2) This is equipped with a scatter assembly, although you could probably do better without using it. The motor to drive the cam is a bit underpowered, so it's not all that smooth, but you could easily replace it with a stronger motor. The leads are wired with wire nuts, making replacement very simple. You could also opt to make a heart shaped cam so that it spends more time in the middle of the coil than on the ends. From what I can tell, many people who have built these have ditched the guide and just position the wire by hand. The long arm sticking out from the front of it is the tensioner arm with a bit of felt on the end. Again, you could ignore it and do it by hand, or use a handclamp like it mentions in the book.
3) The counter works great, driven by a switch and trigger mounted on the rotating shaft. The light switches control the operation of the counter. The first turns it off, basically resetting to zero when switched back on. The second determines the direction of the count, either up from zero or down from a number of turns. There's no way to set the initial number other than letting the machine run for a while and stopping when you get to the number you want to count down from, so you'd probably just start from zero. The third switch allows you to pause the counter, letting you run the winder or turn the shaft without disrupting the count, and it "unpauses" by switching it back.
4) I've got a 2nd carriage that I was building out of left over parts. It could be part of the deal, or it could go to somebody else that wants a head start on a winder.
I'm up for interesting trades or best reasonable offer. I've probably got a couple hundred dollars wrapped up in this thing, plus the time it took to construct.
More pictures here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/personalgu ... 720027159/