Making a fishing mouse.

[mdshunk]

I thought I ought to post a series of pictures on how to make a weight for a piece of string. I use these a lot, and they work better than hex nuts to make a weight for a string to fish inside of walls and such. Use solder with the highest lead content you can find (because it's heavier). Pure lead solder works great. See pics for procedure:

[Roger]

Now thats using your head! How do you grab it once you get to the location your fishing to, just use a little hook and wire?

[mdshunk]

Since it's heavy enough, you can feel it hit the bottom plate. I generally try bobbing it up and down for a minute or so and about 25% of the time you can get it to drop through the hole you should have already drilled up from below. If not, I let the weight rest on the bottom plate and stuff another couple of feet of string down in for good measure. Then, you can bend a little hook on a piece of #10 bare solid copper and fish around in the drilled hole from below and pull the string right out.

I learned this trick after many, many times of drilling a hole up from below and then trying to stick a piece of romex up through the hole to a receptacle cut-out or switch cut-out. Romex seems like it would stay stiff enough, but this often proves frustrating. The string and weight trick is the way to fly. I've even fished a string a weight several stories from an attic to a basement if you follow along the vent stack and such. If you feel the weight hit something and stop, just bob it up and down a bit and it'll ususally jump past whatever it is. If not, you can hold your fingers where the string stopped and pull it back up and take a measurement of the string. This will give you an accurate idea of were the obstruction is if you do need to make a little hole in the wall.

[Roger]

These little tricks are something I really enjoy picking up from you guys, they are invaluable when your trying to get wires around in your house when inevitably those honey do projects come up or you just want to make an improvement. The thing that is great about this stuff is that it addresses certain situations you run into, then in other situations you use some other little trick. When you compile all these you have yourself quite a few "weapons" to get you through some tough installations.

[mdshunk]

I think that it's important also to use a good grade of string, since you will be tying the wire onto it and pulling the wire back with the string. In my picture, I used a piece of cotton string from a chalk line. This is really the wrong type of string, since it is fairly weak and streaches a lot. I like to use either nylon mason's line or sometimes I buy a roll of the really thin rope type string used for weed eater starter ropes.

Next warm day I'll have to root around in my truck and take some pictures of some more home-made and helpful gadgets that help me out of jams.

[Roger]

That would be great Marc, I'll look forward to it.

[Jacksnap]

Roger, the fishing 'mouse' works best when you tie a piece of 'Monterey Jack' just above the solder :D

[bmwpower]

I guess you couldn't use this to fish down an outside wall, eh? Any tool you can use to fish down an outside wall, ie. one that has insulation in the bay?

[mdshunk]

A piece of #6 or #4 solid copper wire or the Greenlee "Fish Sticks" (a.k.a. "glow rods") are the only things I've had any luck with in insulated bays. Fishing in insulated walls is no fun, but I just did three runs down an insulated wall in three different places in a house this morning and it took two of us a couple of hours to accomplish.

[sparky661]

That's a great idea for making a fishing mouse. What if you were to use something magnetic in place of the solder, then use a magnet on a small hinge to push through the top plate as a way to grab the mouse.

[peterpaul]

I thought I ought to post a series of pictures on how to make a weight for a piece of string. I use these a lot, and they work better than hex nuts to make a weight for a string to fish inside of walls and such. Use solder with the highest lead content you can find (because it's heavier). Pure lead solder works great. See pics for procedure:

Hi,
I can say something about this.You first tie the roller to the stick.Then to the roller you have to tie a knot in such a way that it can be pulled with the pulley at the time when you catch a fish.Ok do it and see how you can get it.