Magnet wire wants to unspool itself, so it comes with a wrap of tape that eventually turns into a gummy layer. Rather than put new tape on the spool, gash a notch in the rim with a utility knife and capture the wire therein.
If you’re really clever, you’ll angle the notch so the wire folds backwards and holds itself snug. If you’re not, well, there’s nobody going to notice having two opposing notches in the spool, right?
They used to do this with thread and string, back in the old days when such stuff came on wooden spools, but it seems a lost art…
The Smell of Molten Projects in the Morning 
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4 responses to “Keeping Magnet Wire on the Spool”
I do that with wire-wrap wire. Speaking of lost art…
I have a parts-box drawer of tubes of pre-stripped Wire-Wrap wire that I use for point-to-point soldered connections on circuit boards.
The WW Sockets drawer was last opened to get a socket that I butchered for the crystal capacitance fixture; those things don’t see the light of day very often.
The times, they have changed… and, frankly, for the better!
I’m too lazy for that; I just make a bight 1.5 circumferences from the end of the wire, bring the running end back around the spool in the opposite direction, run it through the bight and pull snug. Sure, it leaves a kink in the wire you might have to cut off but wire is cheap…
a kink in the wire you might have to cut off
It always ends up in the middle of whatever I was going to use the wire for, because I never start by thinking “Now, where will that kink land?”
Must be a blind spot or something…