Pro tip: I used to fight with my fish tape for an hour on a 50-foot run, but after a foreman in Dallas showed me his soap trick, I'm done in 10 minutes.

He just squirted a little dish soap on the tape before feeding it, and now I keep a tiny bottle in my bag for every pull, so what's your best trick for getting wire through a tough conduit?

3 comments

3 Comments

simonl111mo ago

Soap works fine until you get a bunch of dust and crap stuck in a long pipe. Then it turns into a sticky mess. I just use the powdered graphite lube, the stuff in the yellow bottle. It doesn't gum up like soap can.

the_xena1mo ago

Oh man, you just described my entire learning curve with soap. I used it for years, swearing by it, until one day I had to take apart a lock that looked like it was filled with gritty brown glue. That was a bad day. Graphite powder is a total game changer for dry, dirty conditions. It just doesn't attract gunk the same way. I felt pretty silly for not switching sooner.

wyattrobinson1mo ago

Hang on, I gotta push back a little @simonl11. I've had the exact opposite experience with graphite powder. In a dusty environment, that stuff turns into a conductive paste if there's any moisture at all, and then you're dealing with a short circuit and a ruined lock. I've seen graphite actually hold grit in the pins because it's so fine, making things worse over time. Soap is messy, sure, but at least it dries out and doesn't mess with electronics inside a lock cylinder. A properly applied soap (just a tiny bit on the bolt, not the keyhole) has never failed me, even in a dirty gate lock.

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