Joe Kuhn
Hobby Repairman
Pulled the cord right out of my saw yesterday while trying to start it, so I took it apart and couldn't see what I needed to do to fix it.
Found a video on the topic, but it's really slow with a lot of talk while the guy takes every screw out in real time.
Turned off the volume and skipped ahead until I came to this - a rivet at the end of the cord.
Now we're talking. I couldn't find that rivet anywhere, so I knew I'd have to make one for myself. He also pointed out there are two holes for the cord to go through. Seems like a good idea so the pressure at the hold point can be distributed across a half curve.
He then trimmed the end of his cord, flamed it and punched a new hole near the end with a nail.
Key point: he also drove the rivet through the cord into the same hole in the wood that the nail made.
Next key point: with the notch on the reel for the spring facing you, he wound the cord in a clockwise fashion:
From there it was a pretty simple re-assembly. Since I was using all new cord, I new my procedure would be somewhat different and easier. Here's the cord I used:
I used an 8 penny sinker nail and cut the head off it with a hack saw.
Filed on both ends
until I could slide it all the way in by one of the holes in the reel with my thinnest needle nose pliers.
You can see above I also put a couple of flat edges on the nail head to get it as close to the center of the reel and the hole as possible.
I turns out one of the holes the cord has to go through has a flat surface next to it. I figured that's where the rivet needs to go. You can see that in the first hole here as I turn the reel in front of my phone (I hope you can see this as my video goes out of focus at just the wrong time). The second hole doesn't have a flat surface on either side.
The rest of the assembly was pretty logical as you can imagine if you've ever done this before. I even found the original handle from the guy who gave me the saw. I'm ready to get my Mac barking at some trees once again. The sound of this Mac reminds me of my dad cutting up dead trees in the woods we bought when I was a kid on the farm.
We'll see how long my new cord lasts.
Oh, when I showed this problem to my son he said to just tie a knot it the cord and feed it through correctly. We tried that and discovered the knot was too big to go into the slot in the reel.
Found a video on the topic, but it's really slow with a lot of talk while the guy takes every screw out in real time.
Turned off the volume and skipped ahead until I came to this - a rivet at the end of the cord.
Now we're talking. I couldn't find that rivet anywhere, so I knew I'd have to make one for myself. He also pointed out there are two holes for the cord to go through. Seems like a good idea so the pressure at the hold point can be distributed across a half curve.
He then trimmed the end of his cord, flamed it and punched a new hole near the end with a nail.
Key point: he also drove the rivet through the cord into the same hole in the wood that the nail made.
Next key point: with the notch on the reel for the spring facing you, he wound the cord in a clockwise fashion:
From there it was a pretty simple re-assembly. Since I was using all new cord, I new my procedure would be somewhat different and easier. Here's the cord I used:
I used an 8 penny sinker nail and cut the head off it with a hack saw.
Filed on both ends
until I could slide it all the way in by one of the holes in the reel with my thinnest needle nose pliers.
You can see above I also put a couple of flat edges on the nail head to get it as close to the center of the reel and the hole as possible.
I turns out one of the holes the cord has to go through has a flat surface next to it. I figured that's where the rivet needs to go. You can see that in the first hole here as I turn the reel in front of my phone (I hope you can see this as my video goes out of focus at just the wrong time). The second hole doesn't have a flat surface on either side.
The rest of the assembly was pretty logical as you can imagine if you've ever done this before. I even found the original handle from the guy who gave me the saw. I'm ready to get my Mac barking at some trees once again. The sound of this Mac reminds me of my dad cutting up dead trees in the woods we bought when I was a kid on the farm.
We'll see how long my new cord lasts.
Oh, when I showed this problem to my son he said to just tie a knot it the cord and feed it through correctly. We tried that and discovered the knot was too big to go into the slot in the reel.
