My sister, she of the decades of experience in fiber arts, keeps asking me if I have these weirdly named tools used for weaving. Bobbin winder, warping board, warping mill... and then when I say I have no idea she sends me links. And then I choke at the prices and NOPE out.
However. I follow in the great tradition of both of my grandfathers and my father in that I am, by some weird fluke of talents, what I call a Scroungecrafter.
A Scroungecrafter is one who, when shown or told of a thing, can go rummaging through a stash with some basic tools and a few minutes or hours later emerge with a custom-built Thing that fulfills all specs. Will it be pretty? Doubtful. Will it work and possibly work better than the catalog version? Most likely. May I present for your approval the Scroungecrafter's Warping Mill.
Version 1.0 - The proof of concept. See, in my head, a warping mill deconstructs to a set of sticks a certain distance apart which can spin. A quick rummage through the house later and I had this set up, a PVC frame taped to a lazy susan.
The PVC frame is from one of those mesh laundry bag frames. And in answering the question of what do I really need (and how often would I use this) I'd qualify this proof of concept a success. I even cut the frame down so that each rotation is exactly 1 yard, meaning if I wanted to say, cut 6 yard increments, all I have to do is count 6 strings then cut. It also allows me to see the pattern in the variegated yarn at how many yards per color. Feeling like being frustrated? Look at that second picture, go top to bottom, the last pattern section is not the same as the rest of the skein. >_< This is where this proof of concept instantly earned its build cost. And what prompted me to make a second version. Version 1.1 - 180 degrees of speed Okay, so I can't trust any of my variegated skeins anymore. They could all have weird hidden patterns in them. How can I best speed up the tedious process of spinning the lazy susan? By putting it on an axle!
$28 of supplies, a $10 PVC pipe cutter, a frame from an old towel rack, and a day later...
The house's Quality Inspector has deemed it good.
Scroungecraft Warping Mill Version 1.1 is done! Again, the outside dimension where the yarn goes is 1 yard. It spins freely, easily, and I can put an entire skein of yarn on it in about 10 minutes. The most frustrating part of all of it was getting the dimensions right, there was a lot of Pythagoras involved to get the geometry correct. I'm very pleased with it, especially as the cheapest warping mill I could find online was $140. I'm very very pleased with it.