Wire Holder

  
  In every shop there is a selection of tools and accessories whose purpose is to repair something that has fallen off, come loose or is warn out and needs to replaced, soon, but not right now 'cause I'm in the middle of something else.  Those tools include clamps, tape, long screws and occasionally a big hammer. Usually included with this group of last ditch helpers is wire. A while ago I bought a small roll of fixing stuff wire.

  I don't know the gauge of the wire, and I don't care.  This wire is green, but it needn't be.  It was cheap and I threw it into my shopping bag remembering the last time I needed to wire something together I had to raid the junk drawer in the kitchen and twist multiple twist ties together.  I hate having to do that, partly because it involves climbing up stairs from my shop and because it adds yet another step to a 'quick' little fix it job.  'Quick' fix it jobs are almost never quick, and usually half fixed, at best.

 The other day I grabbed this wire and I thought of my Father who had a coil of general shop wire in his shop. His wire was not wrapped around a stick like my green wire.  My green wire has too many kinks and corners.  My Father's wire was wrapped around a thing similar to this:

so that it unwrapped smoothly and easily.

  His wire holder was inspired by a 'fishing stick'.  Ice fishermen in the old days in Northern Ontario wrapped their fishing line around a stick like this and carried it in to the lake and jigged for trout and pickerel. (this is in the ancient times before snow machines, when skis and snow shoes were how you got about in the bush)  Usually the sticks were about a foot long so that the fisherman would be able to accurately know how much line he had out.

  I remember my father had a couple of 'fishing sticks' that he had carved. As well as his wire holding stick. I don't know where the fishing sticks are now, probably handed on to my more vigorous and outdoorsy cousins. If they ice fish old school then they deserve the sticks. For that matter I don't know where the wire holder is either. 

 

   
  So here is a quickie homage to 'fishing sticks' and that coil of wire in my Father's shop. Now my repair wire has  no kinks and is easy to find in the bottom of the tool box.