Today (2024-07-26) I had another rendition of this lesson that I could have sworn I'd learned by now.

"If you have to do a task more than a couple of times, get the right tool for the job"

Now, that's a guideline, there are obviously times where the 4 times you need to do thing where the "right tool" costs an amount that is outside your budget, and isn't available to borrow in some way, it's just not an option. But when it is an option.. goodness the levels to which it pays off.

Today's reminder of this lesson came from a charming truth about electrical wiring.

That truth is this; There are ways you can run wires before drywalling, that absolutely do not work to re-run wires after the drywall has been put up.

Fishing wires into existing boxes, particularly when the original wiring has been stapled to the studs, can be a real pain, and has been a lot of what we've been doing around here recently. Today we were fishing wire to the light switch in a room, and we were getting nowhere. The most direct method for this that we've found is to use a "fish stick", a moderately flexible carbon fiber rod with a hook at the end, run it down the hole in the framing of the wall that we have access to from the attic, and have someone with a piece of wire to use as a hook to help guide it in to the box. Often this isn't even necessary, because the box is directly below said hole, as it should be, and within a couple of attempts, the person lowering the fish stick lands it directly into the box.

I say should here, because several times now that has not been the case. The hole is, for whatever reason, somewhere between a half an inch to two inches away from the box! Often that's not an issue, the pole is flexible for exactly that reason.. but someone, at some point, got the brilliant idea to shore up these walls with random pieces of wood at random intervals (not just firebreaks, which we have also encountered, but are reasonable), and this time these obstructions made it impossible to reach the box.

We took a minute to regroup, and took a step that's often recommended when trying to figure out where and how to run wires. We drilled a small hole (about the diameter of a 12 gauge wire) in the ceiling, indicating the location of the box. We then put an off cut of wire through that hole to make it easy to find. As I had guessed, the hole we were working with was a good inch away from where it needed to be. It was time to drill through the frame of the wall again. This isn't the first time I've done this, we've had to add holes to the wall frame to drop wires down a few times now. It's been a complete pain every time. Today I owned that that a big part of the issue is that something was wrong with our tooling.

To do run a wire through a beam, you need to drill at least a 5/8" hole. That's not a thin hole! The wood on the top of these wall frames is at least 2 inches deep, probably more (I am not known for my estimation skills). That's a substantial hole to drill. Sure, there's plenty of bigger holes to drill, but when the extent of your drilling history has been pilot holes for screws, it's a big upgrade.

Up till today, I've been using a plain spade-style wood boring bit in our standard drill. It can work, but it takes a long time, if I let the speed get up to high, the friction on either the sides of the hole or on the build up of wood shavings would make things warm enough that I could smell woodsmoke, and I'd have to stop and let things cool off a bit before I could return to the work. It would easily bounce around if I didn't keep enough pressure on the tool and was generally a pain to work with. I don't know if this is an indication that the bit has gotten dull and needs to be replaced or what. I recalled, however, that there were a wide variety of large auger style bits that we acquired with a batch of tools that once belonged to my partner's father, and that their mother wanted to get out of the house. So I went digging. And I found a monster of a bit labeled an "electrician's bit" that was a 3/4" wood auger. Also amongst those bits was a 5/8" wood auger, but as today we were running some 12/3 wire (we want independent switches for the light and the fan on our ceiling fans), it made sense to go with the larger of the two. We put it into the drill, and I headed back into the attic. The bit bit directly into the wood.. and then would not spin. The drill I was using just didn't have the torque necessary to get it going. So I backed it out, and went back into the stash of new tools after the tool that bit was intended for, the very nice hammer drill! After making sure that it was not in it's hammering setting, we chucked the bit into the drill, and I went back again into the attic. The first run biting into the wood was a bust, then I remembered - if you want high torque, you gotta go with low speed. So I set the drill into it's low-speed setting, and the bit bored into the wood like a hot knife through butter. It was beautiful and simple and smooth. It took no time at all. Additionally, it took mere moments poking that fish stick down to reach the box we were looking for, we knocked out the run in next to no time. We're now storing that bit (and drill) with the rest of the tools that we've pulled off to the side specifically for use in the ongoing rewiring. I'm going to be so happy as I move forward. I know I have at least 3 more holes like this one to drill, probably more, and I'm just so happy to have found the right tool for the job.

So, I don't know if even I will remember this lesson again the next time I'm frustrated and pushing through a task when the tool is clearly not optimized for it, but I hope that maybe you will! It's so rewarding when things go smoothly!