Showerthought: The elderly lady who showed me a better way to fish cable

I was running coax through a drop ceiling in an old folks' home near Wichita last spring, struggling with a fish tape that kept snagging on insulation. An 82-year-old resident shuffled over with her walker and said, 'Honey, put a magnet on the end of your tape, it'll glide right past the metal studs.' I mean, I felt dumb for not thinking of it myself, but she was spot on - that trick saved me 45 minutes on that one run. Has anyone else gotten killer tips from a customer or passerby like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_drew7d ago

Put a magnet on the end" - I used a fridge magnet to find a lost screw in my carpet once and felt like a genius for a solid week.

logan6326d ago

Magnet trick is golden, I've used that one before too. An old timer showed me to tape a neodymium magnet to the tip of my fish tape and it saves so much headache. Another thing I picked up from a retiree was putting a piece of PVC pipe over the end of the tape to stop it from stabbing through drywall. Old folks have been doing this stuff for decades, they know all the shortcuts we're still figuring out.