Well, smurf.

[Grant Lamontagne]

I don't have a Plier tool with me today.

Lately I've been carrying the Dime, which would be ideal for today's issue.

So would my usual Compact.

But nope.

Just got the Synergy X on me right now.

And I am sitting in an office, surrounded by people I am trying to keep my problem from being discovered.

The silicone earbud cover thing has come off my Bluetooth headset and taken up residence in my ear canal.

 

No tweezers.

No pliers.

Can't grab it with my fingers, not even my nails.

And I'm feeling stupider by the minute.

I'll get it out sooner or later, the only question is, whether I can get it out before anyone else discovers it and wonders why I am digging in my ear like a crazy person.

Wish me luck.

Def

[fullbreakfast]

I keep a highly trained caterpillar in a matchbox for these occasions. Wilfred by name.

[fullbreakfast]

More seriously, the answer is to lie on your side on your desk, with your head projecting at one end, and with the blocked ear facing the floor. Then whack yourself repeatedly on the opposite side of the head with a weighty object until the foreign body drops out of the ear hole.

If you don’t have a frying pan or 5lb hammer handy to use for the whacking, a work boot or heavy duty stapler will do in a pinch.

[powernoodle]

1 - buy a 20 oz. (or whatever units you foreigners use   ) Coke.
2 - guzzle it
3 - squeeze the air completely out of the bottle
4 - place the mouth of the bottle on your ear canal
5 - release the vacuum to extract the ear bud cover

No, this won't work, but hopefully someone will catch you in the middle of it leading to hilarity.

Seriously, needing and not having the proper MT, SAK, etc. is highly frustrating for an MT Legend.  We live for this stuff.   

[fullbreakfast]

I did have another idea, but it involves a hammer drill, a 3/8” masonry drill bit and a 6” bit extender. Those may not be to hand.

[Grant Lamontagne]

I did have another idea, but it involves a hammer drill, a 3/8” masonry drill bit and a 6” bit extender. Those may not be to hand.

I was going to try exactly that but I was worried about damaging the little silicon thingy because I don't have a spare.

I eventually managed to work it out with my fingers and no one here has noticed.  Thankfully, because I share my Morning Joke with the folks here, no one around pays the slightest attention to me.   

Def

[fullbreakfast]

I was going to try exactly that but I was worried about damaging the little silicon thingy because I don't have a spare.

That is a concern, true. Back to the drawing board.

[IMR4198]

SAK on your keychain.  Don't leave home without it.  Best wishes.  G
 

[Alan K.]

It's a moot point now, but couldn't you have poked past the silicon earbud cover with the nail file and pressed the cover against the file with your finger to pull it out?

Besides being uncomfortable, not having the right tool can be very costly.  You may remember that not having pliers cost one contestant half a million dollars when she had to drop out of the Alone survival competition when she had no means to remove a fishhook from her finger.

[Vidar]

This clearly needs hydraulic extraction like stuck metal pins and the like. Rational men might use pliers or tweezers, but as you said you're already behaving like a crazy person lets just go with the flow. If you happen to have syringe nearby fill it up with a suitable fluid, get the needle past the stuck culprit, and fill up whatever is behind with fluid and keep pressing. That thing should pop out. If something else pops that was surely pure happenstance and coinciquence. 

[Grant Lamontagne]

SAK on your keychain.  Don't leave home without it.  Best wishes.  G
 

I have a SAK, just not one with tweezers.   

Do you recall the show Perfect Strangers?

Balki told Cousin Larry in one episode that there were two times in your life when you need to tell someone your feelings.  One is when you love them and the other is when you need them to take a sharp thing out of your ear.  And, apparently you need to be very careful to never mix those two occasions up. 

That's all i could think of this morning when trying to come up with ways of using a SAK to pull the silicon thingee out.   

Def

[Crunchie64]

With a lot of the people I’ve worked with in the past, the solution would be to insert a pencil into the other ear and keep wriggling it until it dislodged the earbud.

Absolutely no danger of meeting resistance with most of them.

[Farmer X]

At least you managed to extract the offending object. Glad that didn't end worse!

[Grant Lamontagne]

With a lot of the people I’ve worked with in the past, the solution would be to insert a pencil into the other ear and keep wriggling it until it dislodged the earbud.

Absolutely no danger of meeting resistance with most of them.

Unfortunately if I stuck a pen in the opposite ear it would likely disappear into the black hole in my skull.   

Def

[Brock O Lee]

With a lot of the people I’ve worked with in the past, the solution would be to insert a pencil into the other ear and keep wriggling it until it dislodged the earbud.

Absolutely no danger of meeting resistance with most of them.

😂

[Sos24]

At least you managed to extract the offending object. Glad that didn't end worse!

 

[Sos24]

I’m glad that your issue was resolved.

Because I absolutely hate being without the capability I need, I tend to sometimes go overboard sometimes.  Nut even then there are the occasions where you tend to forget something andthat will be the one time you need it, even if you carry it 99% of the time and haven’t used it in a year.

[dks]

Try joining a multitool related forum, to get some ideas on how to be better prepared next time.

[lister]

Use the corkscrew! 

 

[Grant Lamontagne]

Try joining a multitool related forum, to get some ideas on how to be better prepared next time.

That's a pretty good suggestion.  I think I will give that a shot.   

Def

[AzteCypher]

EDC some chopsticks for ease of extraction next time?