You may recall an earlier blog entry in which I wrote about my problems with the clothes dryer at my house.

My wife, with crocodile tears in her eyes, told me that our clothes dryer had stopped working and that, sob, I'd need to go buy a new one.

Ok, I thought. Let me first take a look.

The heater element worked just fine, so I determined that the vent was likely clogged, preventing the free flow of warm air to dry the clothes.

So, I thought to myself, I'll use my gas-powered leaf blower and blow the lint out.

It did blow lint out, but not as much as I would have hoped.

You can see the results in this video:

So, I went back to the drawing board and found an auger brush tool at my local hardware store.

This tool features 3-foot rods of fiberglass with an auger brush at the end and your cordless drill at the other end. As the tool works its way into the dryer vent, you simply add another section of rod until you hit the inside of the dryer (stop before you hit the fan elements).

You'll find the video of this effort produced far more vent lint than the leaf blower:

For a moment, I thought that a small dog or wookie had come lunging out of that vent.

I was pleased that I was able to "fix" the dryer without having to buy a new dryer.

Ironically, my clothes washer started throwing off sparks about two weeks after we shot this video and I replaced both.

Wife, happy.