Lacis in-Line Yarn Ball Winder

This winder has an interesting mechanism of winding; the feed coil moves back and forth to wind the yarn onto the spindle as a ball. The gears inside are connected to the spindle only by pressure, and the spindle is attached to the base only by pressure. Unfortunatly, the spindle DOES NOT LOCK INTO PLACE! Therefore, when winding, the spindle works it's way off the base, and the gear loosens from between the spindle and base and the whole thing does not wind at all. The only way around this is to continually hold the spinning spindle onto the base as you wind. However, if you are trying to use your free hand to feed the yarn as you wind, this does not work either.Additionally, it does not hold a full 4 ounce skein as it says. The ball may take a 100 gram shein, but not a 4 ounce skein. It also gets stuck around the base of the spindle sometimes above the base and bellow the ball, and sometimes below the base of the spinle, just as other angled winders do.

It technically works ok for the most part but the nature of the side winding makes it more susceptible to knotting inside. There's a reason more of them aren't oriented that way. I'm also not a fan of the clamp not actually being attached to the winder, easy to get lost and not particularly stable. If you can afford to get something better, do it. I ended up giving this to a friend and buying the Stanwood Jumbo which is more expensive but much higher quality and capacity. I'd recommend the Royal ball winder over this one as well.

My only real disappointment in this ball winder is that the size of the ball is a bit more limited than the "wobble-style" ball winders that I have used. But it is constructed out of much durable material (the "guts" are metal, not cheap plastic gears that strip over time) and it is much easier to transport. I would rather wind two smaller balls on this one than one larger ball on the cheap plastic one that has a tendency to jump around and eventually strip the gears, or catch your yarn IN the gears. NOt good. This one has no exposed mechanisms that can catch yarn. All in all, a good value!

I didn't expect this to be a fabulous winder at this price, however I also did not expect to be so completely disappointed with it. The yarn constantly "skips" while winding which leads to messy, tangled cakes of yarn when trying to use them. The gears are jumpy while turning the handle (which coincides with the yarn skipping) and it's rather noisy to use. Then only thing that helped minimize the skipping was re-winding yarn and already wound skein and putting zero tension on it - which is pointless because then the resulting cake is huge and loose and doesn't hold together at all. If you have to wind yarn from a hank it's totally useless as the swift puts too much tension on the yarn for this to wind smoothly, even when the hank is just draped loosely on the swift. I didn't expect to love this, but I hoped it would do the job well enough till I could get something better. It's going back and I am going to just invest in a better one immediately.

I was a little worried when I ordered this item, since I couldn't find a personal review only store descriptions that echoed "Smooth winding action" and I own another plastic winder from Lacis that is really sub-par--> Yarn Ball Winder The in-line winder is a charm. Much heavier plastic construction, when clamped to a table actually stays on the table (the other winder does not), and (best of all) there is no possible way for the yarn to jump into the gears.In case you're wondering, it *does* have very smooth winding action when winding from a yarn swift. Swift Yarn Windr-Med If this winder ended up lost or stolen-- I would buy it again in a heartbeat.

I have a classic ball winder, the kind that wobbles, and I have nothing but trouble with it. So I bought this "pencil sharpener" kind years ago from Lacis. LOVED IT. Nothing but success with that winder. Somehow it got lost, misplaced, or buried in my house. So I dug out the traditional wobbly one. Still nothing but trouble. Finally I splurged and bought myself a new in-line (looks like a pencil shapener) kind. Ah bliss! It's a happy day to wind center-pull yarn cakes on my new beloved Lacis in-line winder! No problems at all. No knotting if you lose rhythm. No yarn caught in the gears. No issues whatsoever. Yay!

The inline design is okay.I just wish it had come with a clamp as pictured. I have no way to anchor this to use it easily! Lacis In-Line Yarn Ball Winder

I had ordered a different brand of yarn ball winder from Amazon a few months ago and it was a piece of junk. It had too many parts that came apart, which had to be twist-locked together, so that once you started winding, all these twist-locks started coming undone, and it was a disaster.By contrast this Lacis winder is all of a piece and seems reasonably sturdy. I used it to wind a 1350-yard laceweight cashmere skein yesterday and it was fine. I'm hoping it stays that way.