My Not-So-Smart Wrap

Okay, this is embarrassing. With my earphone wires snagging everywhere while I go to and fro about the MRT, I decided that I really needed to get a Sumajin SmartWrap – except that I’m too cheap to buy one. I tried using twist-ties to manage my wiring, but it just didn’t feel right, particularly because of the way it made the wires bunch together awkwardly. So I thought, why not just make my own SmartWrap? After all, it’s a fairly simple plastic item. It shouldn’t be so hard to make a do-it-yourself version, right? And so I did. The result? Well, let’s just call it the ScrapWrap (head hanging in shame)…
The first step was to select a suitable material for my planned SmartWrap clone. It has to be firm, yet pliable enough to be cut by a good pair of scissors (since I had no access to an industrial lathe). After much searching, I finally decided to use a DVD case. It was made of the kind of thin plastic that fit my requirements. Plus, it was only four pesos each at CD-R King, heheh.
And so with a pair of scissors I proceeded to murder this piece of plastic and to sculpt out my planned SmartWrap. I had the design clearly in my mind. After all, what’s a SmartWrap but a piece of plastic that’s shaped like a stylized femur, with notches on both ends for you to snap your wire into place? That shouldn’t be so hard to make! At least that’s what I thought. In reality, yes it wasn’t hard to make. But that assumes that you don’t give a flying fig to just what it ends up looking like.
And… here it is. My ScrapWrap. Horror of horrors. I test drove my ScrapWrap, and I have to admit that it worked on at least one level: the wires did snap crisply into place on both ends, and it was functional enough to manage my wiring for me. Aesthetically though, as you can see, it is a nightmare, jagged edges and all. The only way I can take this along is if I buried it completely under coils and coils of wiring. And there is one other big problem with my ScrapWrap: because it’s made of flat plastic, I noticed that my earphone wires ended up getting way too sharply folded after being wrapped around it, which could lead to a risk of cutting through the wire’s insulation at worse (the jagged edges didn't help at all). So it may not exactly be good for your earphones’ health. By contrast, a real SmartWrap has gently curved edges which do not threaten to slice your wiring. At any rate, because of this monstrosity (or perhaps out of pity), a good friend of mine decided to give me a real Sumajin SmartWrap. So now you can see the difference between the real thing and my sorry-looking ScrapWrap!

Hmmm. If there’s a moral to this story, it might be this: If you want something bad enough, try making it yourself. Sooner or later, someone’s bound to feel sorry enough for you to give you the real deal.