The old trick with a piece of string for wire pulling still works better than anything fancy I've tried

Last week I had to run a new set of nav light wires through a tight wing root on a 172, and my fiberglass fish tape kept binding up. I remembered an old timer showing me to tie a fishing weight to some mason's line and let gravity do the work, got it through in under 10 minutes. Anyone else still use old-school methods like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

carr.willow13d ago

The fishing weight trick is genius, I did something similar last month with a pilot hole on a house rewire. I used a spare 3/8 nut tied to some paracord and dropped it down the wall cavity, worked like a charm.

the_zara13d ago

Buddy of mine was rewiring his old bass boat and couldn't get the new transducer cable through the conduit. He tried a shop vac with a rag, even a damn wire coat hanger bent into a hook. Finally grabbed a handful of lead sinkers from his tackle box, tied them to some 50lb test fishing line and dropped it right through the first try. Said the sinkers rattled around the bends like they knew where they were going.