On Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:24:09 +0100, John Moppett wrote:

The cable on my Flymo hedge trimmer (and to a lesser extent that on my
Flymo lawnmower) is forever tying itself in knots. No matter how often
I try to unkink and straighten it, it always curls into knots again.

The inside of a cable is rather like a rope. When you coil the cable up
you need to twist it slightly in your fingers so that it follows its
natural curve. If you are righthanded, hold the coil in your left and
feed on with the right, twisting it by rolling you forefinger across
your thumb, away from your body

Coiling cables is something that many people can't get right. The above
method works but when you just take an end and walk away with it you end
up with the twists still in the cable which means it won't lie properly
and the twists may well build up each time you coil it.

There are two solutions:

One lay the cable on the ground in a figure of 8 pattern and just keep
following the same base fig of 8. This is good for thick heavy things like
hosepipes. You can just pick up the free end and walk away with no kinks
twists or loops.

For lighter cables you can hand coil but each twist you put in is in the
opposite direction to the previous. So they cancel out when you walk away
with the end. The only danger is if you take the end through the coil
before walking away, you can end up with a whole line of knots. However
they are all tied in the same direction so you can just take an end
(doesn't matter which one) back through them all and carry on pulling and
they all magically disappear.

I don't think I can explain how to alternate the twists as you coil a
cable but these YouTube videos show it quite well:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqbYyaUY5Sk
This is the way I do it, some of the other ways seem very cack handed to
me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLBUzmA4kTU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLwwB29uQRg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaEv9wm6gy0
This is an interesting variation I cam across looking for the above. Not
very neat or compact though, I can see all those open loops getting caught
round every tool in the shed...

I wrap cables for a living as a Broadcast Sound Engineer...

--
Dave Liquorice MIBS
Broadcast Sound Engineer
Alston, Cumbria, UK "It's all right leaving me."