Nate Nagel wrote:
Eigenvector wrote:
I'm in the process of pulling new phone cable for my house and tied
the old cable to the new cable with electrical tape. Unfortunately
the two became separated and now I need to push the new cable through
the 1/4" or so hole in the wall and out the house. I know the holes
aren't aligned, so I'm hoping there is an easier way to do this that
doesn't involve "cut the drywall" The jack that it came from was a
surface mount jack, so there is no box in the wall, just a hole in the
drywall.

I know that there is fishtape, but for some reason I thought the head
on fishtape was larger than the diameter of phone cable. The holes
are almost exactly the diameter of the phone cable, if not smaller,
whoever did the fishing of the wires did a really good job. The hole
is small enough so that looking through it is hopeless - no eyeballing
this job.

just use a length of stiff wire instead of a fish tape; a 14AWG single
copper conductor will work, or even better would be some smaller yet
stiff steel wire (aka "mechanic's wire")

nate


In a pinch a straightened wire coat hanger can work pretty well. And it
has the benefit of being free.

OP: how far is it that you need to thread this telephone wire? Straight
through a normally-constructed wall? Is the construction brick or
something else difficult? Normally the original telephone installer
would have used an "installer's bit" (what else?) to go through the
entire structure and then to pull the wire through. This means that the
path really should be quite straight but not necessarily perpendicular
to the walls and once you figure out what the original path is,
threading the new wire becomes much easier. Normally I'd just put a
piece of coat hanger wire perhaps 18" long onto the end of the wire like
a needle on a thread (but _firmly attached_ using minimal taping without
looping)and poke around a bit to figure out the path and then push it on
through.

--
John McGaw
[Knoxville, TN, USA]
http://johnmcgaw.com