Finally caved and bought a real fish tape after an attic nightmare in Wichita

I used to swear by the cheap fiberglass fish tapes, figured they all do the same job. Then last Tuesday I had a run in an attic over in Wichita, pulling two RG6 lines for a new customer. That thing kinked up on me three times inside the insulation, and I spent a solid hour just fighting the damn reel. Eventually the tip snapped off and I had to drop a new line from the other side, which meant crawling back through that 120 degree crawl space. My buddy loaned me his steel tape with a glow rod combo the next day and it flew through the same path in about 15 minutes. I dropped $60 on a decent one that afternoon and now I get why the old timers never touch the cheap stuff. Has anyone else had a fish tape fail at the worst possible moment, or am I just unlucky?

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beth_butler7528d ago

Used to be the same way, always grabbed the cheapest fish tape I could find and figured it was fine. Then I had one bind up in some old blown insulation in a customer's attic outside of Tulsa, and the tip just snapped clean off. Had to cut a hole in the drywall to get at the wire, which turned a twenty minute job into a three hour mess. That was the day I learned my lesson about cheap tools. Bought a decent steel one the next morning and never looked back. Sometimes you just have to pay for the good stuff to save yourself the headache later.