Attached is a picture of my telephone handset cord. You can see in the center where the coiling pattern deviates. At that point, the coil changes from clockwise to counterclockwise. Clearly at some point the cord got twisted on itself in some unfathomable way, and I am not smart enough to figure out how to untwist it.

You can't imagine the sleepless nights I have spent worrying about this, the countless hours spent twisting and bending the unwieldy cord in a fruitless effort to resolve the situation.

No doubt there is a simple trick to fix this, but I am not clever enough to discern it. Short of taking the telephone to China where the cord was manufactured, how can I restore this cord to its former, pristine clockwise-only curl?

tanstaafl.

Clearly you've been doing pirouettes while using the phone. Stop that!

I hate when that happens. I wish I could tell you how I used to do it, but it's been a while and I'm not sure I really knew how I was doing it at the time. I'm looking around online because now you've gotten me curious...

There's a knack to doing it. If you can do without your phone for a while feel free to Fedex it over and I'll do it for postage.....

I worked in a BBC control room and this was a regular exercise on boring night shifts.....

This is something that has been causing me mild annoyance for years!

Hold the cord with both hands thumb and forefingers on the coil to either side of the kink.
Twist the right hand in the direction shown.
This will cause one coil to move from the right side of the kink to the left side.
One turn for every coil on the right hand end of the cord.

Admittedly that's much easier than my method which involves a particle accelerator, micro black holes, a red sock and a ball-peen hammer.

I've tried Glenn's method before, but the resulting curls in the cord are never satisfactory. It's as if only the kinked area is faulty. Reversing the coil for the other section then makes it weird.

What causes this? It's another reason why I love cordless phones.

Maybe I should have written it,

while (coils_on_right)...

It depends on how long it's been kinked, after time, the plastic takes a set.

This reversing the coils technique can be used to tighten a cord that is loose from being stretched too much/often.

I had that happen a lot to me too. I got fed up with it as well so I bought some Sennheiser headphones.

The chords on these are straight.

Attempting to do this resulted in an even worse tangle.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should point out that there are two kinks in the cord (see attached photo), which brings up the interesting philosophical conundrum of whether the coil anomalies always appear in pairs, and if so whether the correct solution is to manipulate the cord so that the two anomalies converge and neutralize each other.

Of course the simple solution would be to go to Fry's and buy another cord...

tanstaafl.

This forum makes me feel less dumb for being concerned about stuff like this (this drives me nuts, even at other people's houses). Fortunately, I've been cordless for a while

The tight part of the cord, in the middle of the photo, looks to be the correct wind. Just take a wooden spoon, dowel or whatever, and wind the backwards portion around it the correct way. That should do it and it's faster/easier than flipping individual coils with your thumbs IMO.

If I understand correctly, your suggestion and Glenn's both require you to twist the plastic all the way to the end of the chord to correct the kink. Is that right?

That doesn't make sense to me, and every time I've corrected it it hasn't required so much work. Logically, it didn't take twisting the length of the cable to get it kinked in the first place, so reversing it should be just as simple.

Unfortunately, like Jeff I've been cordless for a long time, so it's been years (maybe 10) since I've had to do this on a regular basis. Maybe I'll see if there's an old phone chord like this somewhere in my stash...

Are you sure? Chances are that every time you pick up the handset and put it back you end up twisting it.

That said, in cases where there are two kinks, they are usually opposites of each other. They will almost always cancel each other out when they occupy the same space.

Simple twisting each time you pick up the phone results in tangles like the attached, but doesn't cause the kinks. I don't know what causes those.

tanstaafl.

I don't believe the two kinks occupied the same space to begin with- so, like Matt, I also feel there should be an easy way to get them to cancel out.

Never worked at it, though.

Trust me, if the middle of the cord is the correct wind, the two kinks will not cancel out. That would require rewinding the middle of the cord, leaving you with an entire length that's now wound incorrectly. It will never be as tight as the middle is in the photo now and will be more prone to tangling and kinks.

Sometimes it's only a few coils out of place, which is why you don't have to rewind a large section of cord and it may seem like it can just be popped back into place. But in the photos it seems like long sections are now wound in the opposite direction. You can only fix it by winding them back the correct way. There's no magical solution.

I know you're right, but I want there to be one!

What about this?

The tighter wind is usually the wrong wind. You can easily simulate the double kink problem thusly:

1. grab two adjacent loops of a cord and rotate your hands in opposite directions so as to expand the loop until you have a new loop that doubles back on itself
2. repeat that on the next loop and keep doing it

You'll now have a cord that has the correct spiral on either end with a length of incorrect spiral in the middle.

I think how this occurs in the real world is that people twist the cord open without unfurling it until it twists on itself. Then it keeps going and keeps going until the single kink separates itself and moves outward. You might be able to simulate this by simply untwisting a cord for a while.

Mmmm, crackly!

Actually you could be right. I thought the middle section in this instance looked more natural, but now with another look, I noticed a part to the right of the middle which shows a bump in the cord. It looks like the coils are trying to get to their original wind here.

In this case it's as simple as connecting each end of the cord to a car or truck and stretching it right out. Then slowly reverse the trucks while someone guides the coils in the correct orientation.

I would have said the opposite, as stretched cords that are backwound tend to be very tight.

I have given up trying to fix this cord. It is now stretched out of shape and tangles if I so much as look at it funny. So now I need a new cord.

Is it even possible to acquire a telephone handset cord that isn't of the evil coiled variety? Just five feet of regular phone wire with RJ-22 connectors on each end? Or if coiled is the only kind there is, how about one that is shorter than 12 feet? A six-foot coiled cord would be just fine.

tanstaafl.

I can crimp some RJ-22 connectors onto flat phone cable, and drop the result into the post for you. No problemo.

I think we have white, biege, grey, clear (grey-sh), and possibly black cable in the junk bin here, and I'm pretty sure I've got the RJ-22 connectors as well.

Cheers

Mark, that would be great. Black would be my preferred color, and if that is not readily available, grey would be second choice, but in any case color is not critical. Five feet (1.5 meters) would be a good length.

Do you still have my address? Will you let me reimburse you for postage and the various bits?

Bitt: Those retractable cords look interesting, but the telephone sits on a high shelf and is very light. I'm afraid it would just pull off the shelf rather than unwind the cord. I might try it anyway and figure some way to secure the phone to the shelf -- Velcro comes to mind for that.

tanstaafl.

Mmm.. after digging around here a bit, no, I don't.

PM me with it, and your new dark-gray 5' cord will get dropped into the mail for you. If the postage is more than a twoonie, I'll let you know. Otherwise no worries, mate!

-ml