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"Isn't there a better way to lube wire?"
It started out as one of those rhetorical, I'd-rather-be-anywhere-but-here questions that any employee will grumble when faced with a nasty task at work, but it inspired more than the typical "I wish" in response. Maybe it was because they were tired of washing congealed Yellow 77 out of their clothes at the end of the day. Or maybe it was because they'd slapped it on a few hundred thousand too many feet of wire in their careers as electricians. Whatever the reason, when Dennis Hartman and Tim Coder asked themselves that question six years ago, they decided to find out.
So when Coder could spare a minute, the self-professed "tinkerer" would hole up in the workshop on his farm in Effingham, Kan., where he'd cobbled together several homemade tools in the past, to hammer out a solution with Hartman's input. And three years later, once they were sure they had a self-contained wire-lubricating system that would work without the occasional kick or screw tightening, they put down the tools. "It took a long time," Coder...