When you have an empty conduit and want to pull a wire thru it you need to place a pull string into that conduit. Nowadays we use a long (50-100 feet) skinny (1/8 inch diameter) flexible fiberglass 'snake'. Prior we used a metal snake, same lenght but steel with a rectangular cross section of about 1/16 inch by 3/16 inch.
The term, snaking a cable, actually predates these modern tools. The old technicians kept a trained garter snake. They would tie a light pull string to the snake's tail and point him into the conduit. A small mouse would be secured at the far end as both encouragement and as a reward for a job well done. Unfortunately, this only worked if the snake was hungry and limited the number of pulls to about three a day.
Posted by at August 6, 2004 05:36 AM