Tried that fiber drum trick on a DT run, now I'm wondering if I've been wasting time

Last Friday I had a downtown Charlotte job with 8 drops in one building, so I finally tried rolling the fiber onto a 5 gallon bucket lid like that older guy on a forum mentioned. It took me about 20 minutes to set up and I kept thinking it would turn into a tangled mess, but honestly it spooled out cleaner than my usual hand coil method. I finished all 8 terminations by 3pm, which is about an hour faster than my normal pace on those multi-floor runs. The catch is that it only works on open walls where you can spin the lid, so it's not a universal fix. Has anyone else bothered with this for long pulls, or do you all stick with standard reels for bigger jobs like this one?

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skyler_craig10d ago

Man, that's actually a solid trick! It reminds me of how people say the best way to handle a mess is to stop fighting it and just work with how the material wants to move. I've noticed that with a lot of stuff, like extension cords or even garden hoses, the moment you try to force a coil pattern it just tangles worse. The fiber drum thing sounds like it's just letting the slack do its own thing, which is honestly how most good ideas end up working. Maybe that's the real lesson, the setup time is just the cost of not cussing at a bird's nest later.