The Weird Wide Web 06 Oct 2007 10:53 pm
Spackle befuddlement
Something in today’s home fix-it column in the PI had me scratching my head.
For a small spackling job with easy cleanup, cut a tennis ball in half and fill it with spackling mixture. Dip the spackling tool into the half-ball and, when finished, toss the ball.
My spackling career has not been especially ambitious, so it is possible that I’m missing something here. But why on earth would you go through all the trouble of cutting a tennis ball in half — not as easy as it sounds — when you could just use an clean yogurt cup? Heck, you could probably use a ziplock bag. Or any other small disposable container, really. I’m flummoxed.
on 07 Oct 2007 at 8:55 am 1.Mia said …
That does seem odd. And it seems obvious that this person lives in a retriever-free household, or else all tennis balls would be otherwise spoken for.
on 07 Oct 2007 at 9:52 am 2.Anonymous said …
This is similiar, in my mind, of a set tricks to get around a bad haircut, and at then end you realize they never say “Wear a hat”.
on 07 Oct 2007 at 10:48 am 3.Wim L said …
Maybe the halved tennis ball is to be salvaged from one that’s already been torn apart by the retriever?
on 07 Oct 2007 at 12:00 pm 4.surlyben said …
First, I’d need to buy a tennis ball. Who has tennis balls just lying around? No one I know that doesn’t also have a dog. Is tennis even that big of a sport in Seattle? It was where I grew up, but it didn’t rain 250 days a year there…
on 07 Oct 2007 at 12:44 pm 5.cissa said …
But- using a yogurt cup would not involve DANGER! while cutting a tenis ball in half gives you the chance of cutting off fingers!
I think I’d use a cheapie sandwich bag, and grab a handful of spackle with my hand in it, and when done invert it over the spackle. But that too lacks DANGER!
on 07 Oct 2007 at 2:30 pm 6.Cam Sculpin said …
DANGER!
Heh. Makes as much sense as anything.
on 07 Oct 2007 at 3:56 pm 7.naomi said …
I think the person was omitting crucial information about why the spackling was needed in the first place. Perhaps someone, in one’s brief fit of passion, slammed a door open too hard, a door that did not have a door stop that would prevent the knob from gouging the wall. And thus, a hole in the wall was made. This hole is what needed patching. And voila, my friends: One half of the tennis ball can be used for spackle, while the other half can be affixed to the wall to act as a protector.
on 07 Oct 2007 at 6:13 pm 8.Lisa said …
All I see is a half of a tennis ball with a tool stuck in it, full of wet spackle being tossed over the shoulder onto the living room carpet. Then the retriver gets up and grabs the ball, shaking it to get the tool out. The spackle must not taste good as the dog starts drooling and spits out the ball, again on the living room carpet. Now you have little puddles of spackle, dog drool, and blood from the finger you cut while trying to saw the tennis ball in half ground into the carpet that the dog is now rolling on.
on 08 Oct 2007 at 12:22 am 9.Cam Sculpin said …
Hm. Lisa, I think that may count as another point in favor of the DANGER! hypothesis.
on 08 Oct 2007 at 6:54 am 10.Joy said …
What Ben said. But it is an interesting example of what different people consider the mental category “normal things lying around the household” to contain.
on 08 Oct 2007 at 11:47 am 11.Ian J said …
This is one of those bits of common sense advice which actually contains zero common sense. Hooray!
For instance, spackle can be had in a small yogurt container, albeit a heavily-built one. It costs less than $5. That small spackle container, used to fill nail holes and the like, will last for years if resealed, and there’s no more advanced clean-up involved than washing off your putty knife, or chipping it off, if you wait too long.