Equipment that coats continuous ceramic fibers and fiber tows has been built and tested. Fibers and tows could be cleaned, coated, and heat‐treated without contamination from contact with coated parts and without bending. The equipment was used to coat AVCO SiC SCS‐0 fibers with alumina, using an aluminum isopropoxide‐derived sol Fibers were continuously coated at 95 cm/s to 0.5 cm/s at temperatures between 100° and 1300°C. Sol concentrations with alumina yields between 8 g/l and 118 g/l were used. Coating thickness increased directly with sol concentration, but thickness was relatively insensitive to temperature and coating rate. Thickness could be calculated from sol concentration assuming a 15–μm thick sol layer wetted the SCS‐0 fibers. The coating thickness was not uniform at sol concentrations of 8 g/l and at high coating rates when 188 g/l sol concentrations were used. Multifilament tows of Du Pont fibers FP and PRD‐166 were also coated with alumina sol. The outside of the tow bundle was coated, but filament surfaces inside the bundle may not have been coated; if the coating was present it was less than 50–nm thick. Extensive bridging of coating between filaments was observed, and filaments in the tow were often cemented together.