Welcome, Jake! I'm also a newb so forgive my elementary question: have you checked that you're threading it correctly? My strategy would be to try to isolate the problem by very slowly forwarding the hand wheel (by hand) and seeing where the breakage occurs, watching (and testing by plucking the thread) carefully where the thread is becoming really tight before the break. Once you've figured out where it's happening, solving it is usually pretty straightforward.