The old-timer who showed me a better way to safety wire turnbuckles

I was working on a Cessna 172 at KAPA last Tuesday, struggling with a turnbuckle near the tail. A guy named Jerry, must have been 70 something, walked over and said "you're fighting it, kid, let the wire do the work." He showed me this trick of pre-twisting the wire with a pair of cheap duckbill pliers before cinching it, and it cut my time in half. Anyone else pick up a random tip from a seasoned mechanic that you still use today?

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oliver5231mo ago

Wait, did you try it the way he showed you, with the duckbills? That's a solid trick, I actually use a similar method but I'll twist the wire with my fingers first to get a light bend going, then cinch it with the pliers. It sounds like Jerry was one of those guys who just has everything figured out from fifty years of doing it the hard way first. I've had a couple of those moments where some old timer just walks up and shows you something so simple you feel stupid for not thinking of it yourself. The wild part is how many of those little shortcuts have probably been lost because nobody wrote them down (you know, before YouTube was a thing). It's kind of cool when you run into someone who still passes along that kind of knowledge, it's like finding a hidden manual for the whole job.