Hold 200lbs With This Stud Mounted Wire Dispenser-The Stick

Do you know who Rube Goldberg was? If you were as big a fan of cartoons, as I was growing up, I bet you are familiar with his work. Rube was the guy that designed all those wonderfully complicated sequences that did very little in the cartoons.

You know the ones where one character would trip a wire and it would release a bowling ball. The bowling ball would then knock over a shovel that would strike a match. Then the match would light a candle that would burn through a rope, releasing an iron that would fall on a car’s accelerator, sending the car speeding at another character normally missing them and striking the character that set the whole thing up. That was all Rube Goldberg’s work. He was a master of making the simple, complicated and one of my heroes.

Why am I bringing him up here in a tool blog? There are two reasons. One, is I really think you’ll get a kick out of watching the videos at the link above and two, the tool I am going to tell you about is about as far from a one of his machines as you can possibly get.

In fact the only reason this tool qualifies as a machine is because it performs a function. When they coined the phrase “simple machine”, it is very likely they had this in mind.

The tool I’m talking about is The Stick.

The Stick

I have to admit that when I first saw The Stick, I didn’t think much of it. I have decided though, that it was either devised by one of the most brilliant minds in our industry or one of the most twisted. I really can’t decide which.

It is constructed of one twisted piece of metal and resembles nothing more than a piece of scrap metal with a nice paint job. Like many things, though, first appearances can be deceiving.

What is The Stick For?

The Stick addresses one of the most common problems we, as electricians, face. What do you do with a reel of cable while making a pull? If you leave it sitting loose it will spin, flip, roll and leave you with enough kinks in your wire to sing “Lola”.

Of course, we have spool holders, but I have never seen one as compact and easy to store as The Stick. It will never take the place of my Rack-A-Tiers Wire Dispenser, but it wasn’t intended to. The stick is the perfect tool when you have a simple single spool pull to make. Think of wiring wall plugs or light switches.

How it Works

Simplicity is the key word for this tool. You simply hook it onto any standard wall stud. There is no screwing, nailing or mounting involved. It just twists around the stud and hangs there. Then you slide your wire reel onto it and it is ready to go.

It will hold up to a 15 inch spool and as long as you stay at 200 pounds or less it is perfectly secure.

Installation time, I would guess to be, around half a second and about the same for the teardown time. You might could shave that time down a little with practice, but why be in a hurry.

If you do a lot of new residential construction this could very well end up being one of your favorite tools. Give it a try, you won’t be sorry.

Until next time, keep the coffee hot, the beer cold and don’t forget to like us on Facebook.