Heat guns are an incredibly useful tool that most people tend to not fully appreciate until they need one. A couple of weeks ago I had to order a new cord for my sound canceling headphones. I still don’t get why I did it, but thought that ordering a coiled cord — similar to the cord in house phones that connects the receiver to the base of the phone.

I thought to myself, “Hmm, this could work.” Nope. Due to the nature of the cord “wanting” to be in its compressed state as much as possible, unless I wanted to hold my head six inches above the head phone jack for the rest of my life, that simply wouldn’t do. After doing some searching online for how to fix the problem, I found a solution: I could turn my coiled cord into a straight one.

The solution called for a heat gun but since I didn’t have one handy, I borrowed my wife’s hairdryer. With my new tool in hand, I proceeded to follow the directions online and made the cord as taut as possible. After making sure the cord was taught, I blasted it with the hairdryer for a good 15 minutes, making sure to evenly distribute the heat. When I was done and untied the cord, it was marginally straighter, but not nearly as straight as I would have liked it to be.

At this point, it would have been cheaper and quicker for me to just order the correct cord, but I was not about to let the coil defeat me. That’s when I got the heat gun and repeated the process. However, with the heat gun, I only had to hold it for no more than five minutes and when I untied the cord to check my work, it was as straight as I wanted it to be!

If you would like to know more about heat guns feel free to explore Master Appliance and learn about heat gun applications.