Coiling (or wrapping) earbuds seems to be a no-brainer. I used to wrap the earbud wires around my fingers in a circular coil. At the end of the wrap, I’d give a little slack and wrap that around the circular coil to keep the coil from unraveling.
There are two problems to this technique.
- There is a chance of becoming knotted when unwound
- this can easily happen when one of the working ends gets fed into one of the circular coils
- The cinching of the circular coil can cause issues with the wires of the earbuds
- the tight loops can cause the earbud wire to unwind like a pig’s tail (little curls where the tight loops were located)
- damage to the internal wire causing one or both buds to stop working
- the wires connected to the jack can become loose; again resulting in one or both buds failing
To tackle the first problem requires finding the right coiling method. Google search results showed the figure-8 coil to be effective and efficient. I’ve used this method for months. But I still secured the coiled earbuds with multiple tight loops and some half-hitches thrown in.
When wrapping the rubber band on itself for a single pass is called a lark’s head (cow hitch). Wrapping it an additional time is a prusik hitch (prusik knot).
I had to find another solution to locking/securing the fig-8 coil:
* This second video shows an updated way of applying the rubber band to the fig-8 coil: