Use this stuff to fix stuff

I often wonder whether the people who design things ever actually use them -- like golf-bag pen holders that aren't deep enough to engage the pocket clip on a Sharpie:

The radio in my car gradually fades in when I turn it on, and gradually fades out when I turn it off -- I guess because somebody thought that simply starting and stopping would seem too low-tech. But the fading screws up audio books, because every fade-in obliterates a couple of sentences, and every fade-out obliterates a couple more. That's dumb!

Like many cars, mine has a console between the two front seats which contains a 12-volt electrical outlet, a USB port, and an audio jack, among other things. Unlike some such consoles, mine has a little trough in the front, so that when my phone is plugged in I can put the armrest back down without chopping the cable in half:

That's good. But the designer who added that little trough didn't think it all the way through. Almost every time I open the console, my phone cable creeps out of the trough, and that means when I put the armrest back down I'm once again in danger of chopping the cable in half.

Well, I've now eliminated that design flaw, with a cool product my wife told me about, called Sugru. The people who manufacture Sugru describe it as "mouldable glue." It's a little bit sticky, and it has a consistency that's somewhere between that of chewed chewing gum and Silly Putty.

You shape Sugru with your fingers, and stick it to whatever you're trying to fix, then leave it alone for 24 hours. It turns into something that feels like hard rubber, and it stays stuck. I used black Sugru to make a little roof for the cable trough under the armrest in my car. The armrest still latches when I close it, but now my phone's USB cord can't wander into trouble:

Sugru has lots of other uses. You can use it to repair frayed cables:

And to keep your table saw from electrocuting you:

You can also use it to repair all kinds of golf stuff, including leaky shoes, cracked range-finder cases, broken GPS holders, and that little loose thing down near the hosel that's just about driving you crazy. Incidentally, when I bought my table saw, I asked the salesman what the round opening in the deck was for: