Winding the transformers was one of the more difficult tasks on the project. I experimented with painting fake surface to simulate wire windings and several other methods but I couldn’t come up with anything that looked as well as actual magnet wire. That meant manually winding the 10 transformers by hand since the ring was a single piece. Cutting the ring wasn’t an option although that would have made winding the transformers a heck of a lot easier. The process took about eight hours total spread over a few evenings.
It takes three complete windings of the 30 gauge magnet wire to completely cover the transformer and get the proper “rounded” look at the edges. The black cores you see are vinyl to block any light from leaking through the windings and spoiling the illusion of transformer thickness.
I would start by winding approximately 40 feet of magnet wire onto a small custom “spool” that I made. Then I could pass the spool around and through the ring the hundreds of times it took to wind each transformer.
Although magnet wire this thin can be stretched I was unable to do so because it would actually distort the resin ring if taxed too much! A lot of patience went into winding these buggers and trying to get the wires as straight as possible.
You can now see the little “fake screw” details on the transformer sides highlighted by the polished chrome paint–Floquil chome paint is nice stuff that take a light polishing very well.